"Uta Barth: In Between Places"
2000-11-09 until 2001-01-21
Henry Art Gallery
Seattle, WA, USA United States of America

Compelling in its deceptive simplicity, Uta Barth's art questions the traditional functions of pictures and our expectations of them. By photographing in ordinary places — in simple rooms and landscapes - Barth uses what is familiar to shift attention from the subject matter to a consciousness of the processes of perception and the visceral and intellectual pleasures of seeing. In Between Places, the first museum survey of Barth's career, includes seven important projects made between 1989 and this year, a period during which Barth has gained international acclaim for her ground-breaking work.

Ranging from small easel-size pieces, to works of billboard proportions, Barth's images play with our expectations of the medium. More suggestive than descriptive, her interiors and landscapes engage in an almost subliminal way, testing memory, intellect and habitual responses. In an early series, Ground, Barth focuses her camera on unoccupied foregrounds in simple interiors, fashioning images of quiet space that seem expectant of incident. Field is a series comprised of images that explore the visual sensations of light in expansive conditions. In a later untitled series, Barth's use of multiple images in series suggests movement; these large works, informed by film, recreate the contingency of human vision. In Barth's most recent series, nowhere near and ...and of time, she has worked in her own living space, recording sequences of light as it changes through windows and across walls.

IMAGE:
Uta Barth.
Field #9, 1995.
Color photograph on panel.
23 x 28 3/4.
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Gift of Councilman Joel Wachs.
Exhibition print made with permission of Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of Washington

Other Important Exhibitions in Seattle