Tate Modern Level 2: Gyorgy Kepes.

Caught the exhibition of Gyorgy Kepes at Tate Modern. I generally go inside the Tate to see something specific – I don’t just wander around in an aimless way from room to room. On this occasion I wanted to see the work of Gyorgy Kepes who was interested in the relationship between art, science and technology.

                                        Gyorgy  Kepes - Pinterest

His photographic work covers both scientific and mechanical objects but he also took photographs of nature, he was interested in light, particularly the balance between light, space and movement. In his photographs he juxtaposed everyday objects such as bread, scraps of paper, gauze, stones, leaves and feathers, for example, creating abstract works. He was interested in capturing the different shades of light onto photographic paper see pic. below. The photographs in the exhibition are presented horizontally at eye level, and are neatly framed. The curation of the exhibition shows the evolution of his work in a linear manner.

                                        Structure Photogram, Tate Org.

Hi photographs are carefully composed, done without the use of the camera but by exposing objects to light on photographic paper. None of the images is large scale, but small to medium scale as one would expect from this typical process and that specific period. The photographs in this exhibition are all from the 1930’s till 1940’s taken at the Institute of Design in Chicago. It’s a pity that his later work was not included in the exhibition as it doesn’t show his further development through his photographs between art and science/technology. Through his work and experiments he hoped that it would help scientists find new representations for visual models. In his later years he was also concerned by the negative effect technology could have on the planet and the possibility that advanced technology could destabilize men’s biological nature with catastrophic consequences. The exhibition is cut short and it only includes works from his early period; whilst it could have been a bigger exhibition, it is a compact introduction to him and his early work for the novice. He was also part of another exhibition at Tate Liverpool titled Surreal Landscape.

                                        Leaf and Prism, Tate Org.

Throughout his work he searched for points of contacts between art and science, and he discovered this in nature as a common discourse see pic. above.

I am particularly interested in his photographs as I am currently working in photograms as well, exploring abstraction. His photograms are rather abstract and I have a keen interest in the relationship between technology and photography.  At the beginning, he didn’t see technology in itself as negative, he was experimenting. But later on he warned against unrestricted proliferation of technology. He believed science could help us see and understand the connection between the macro and the micro in the world. He was also interested in how we harvest and how we create and channel energy. His work has been acknowledge as having critical impact on the development of digital images on our digital devices.

The room with his work was located on level 2 of the Tate Modern’s East side of the building. Several people from the Tate didn’t know who he was or where the room was located. Finally I found two people from the Tate who knew at least where the East side section was after 30 minutes of searching. It is the first room as you come out of the escalator just to save you time on level 2 of the main building, I went by mistake to the west side.

Yes I spent half an hour looking for this exhibition and I realized how easy it is to get lost even in the old wing of the Tate Modern!

Whitechapel Gallery, A Handful of Dust.

With a sudden burst of energy I was able to view the exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, ‘A Handful of Dust’. The exhibition is on the upper level and to get to it one has to go through another exhibition on the ground floor. The first photograph I saw in the A Handful of Dust exhibition was one by Man Ray taken in Marcel Duchamp’s studio in Manhattan where he took pictures of a large piece of glass covered in dust. Duchamp allowed dust to accumulate over his work called the ‘Large Glass’, also known as ‘Dust Breeding’ see pic. below. 

 Large Glass or Dust Breeding Man Ray, Duchamp, photo Whitechapel Gallery.

Duchamp asked Man Ray to record the progress. There is no specific subject matter or scale.  Man Ray wrote that the image through his camera lens: ‘appeared like some strange landscape seen from a bird’s eye view’ so it appears as an aerial shot, and is pervasive without a specific subject or an original sculpture. As with this photograph one can see photography’s ability to baffle the viewer’s sense of scale, which is one of the elements I am working on with my photographs. In the same period T.S. Eliot published the ‘Waste Land’ where he wrote: ‘I will show you something different from either/your shadow at morning striding behind you/or your shadow at evening rising to meet you’. Basically he is showing how dust can create fear as it pollutes our air. Man Ray describing his photograph said: ‘I would rather photograph an idea than an object, and a dream rather than an idea’. It operates on two levels both the particular and the abstract. The resulting photograph was made while they were out for lunch so with an exposure of about an hour. Between the 1920’s till 1940’s different avant-garde journals used the image in varying frameworks while making changes to the title and editing. In this way the image The Large Glass has became something else. While Man Ray’s photograph was seen as an original in his own right and was seen as a photograph in Duchamp’s case his work is a means to document the production process of The Large Glass, so his interest is in the process. There is a duality between the two. The work creates an open debate about its function and Duchamp’s intention. The Photograph raises more questions then answers for example: is it a photograph or a document? Is it about a concept or the process or both? Or is it just Duchamp’s interest in the mundane ‘dust’. Because of this I found this photograph fascinating; I kept going back and back relooking at it, I saw others doing the same.

  

Photo Pinterest

In the exhibition the juxtaposition of different works from different artists working with dust creates associations in the mind of the viewer. So dust as representing mortality, ‘dust to dust, ashes to ashes’. Examples of this are original postcards showing dust storms in the Midwest in America, Mussolini’s car (see pic. below), covered in dust and the aftermath of the nuclear bombs in Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945. 

                                           Photo Whitechapel Gallery

On one side of the exhibition the photographs show major events such as natural disasters, images of landscape scarred by conflict see pic. below, on another side dispossession within the context of dust as contrasted with the subject matter itself. 

                   Photo by Sophie Ristelhueber - Whitechapel Gallery

Contrasting with anonymous photos, for example the woman drawing with her finger in the dust, in this case dust is outside of context, it doesn’t have an association. Does the presence of dust detract from the underlined subject matter or does it make us think more deeply through our own associations?  The curation of the exhibition creates a narrative of disparate photographs from International works of art such as Man Ray’s photograph to anonymous abstract representations of dust to actual documentation of dust. This is why it is a very well curated and well worth seeing exhibition.