LOIS CONNER － READING LANDSCAPES－M97 Gallery
［Press Release]
2 November – 14 December 2014
ARTIST RECEPTION: Thursday November 13th, 6-8PM
M97 PROJECT SPACE: 170 Yueyang Road No.1 Bldg 3 #102
ARTIST RECEPTION: Thursday November 13th, 6-8PM
M97 PROJECT SPACE: 170 Yueyang Road No.1 Bldg 3 #102
M97 Gallery is pleased to present “READING LANDSCAPES”, an exhibition of platinum palladium photographs by New York-based artist Lois Conner. Having consistently worked in China over the past 30 years, this will be Lois Conner’s first gallery exhibition in Shanghai. There will be a reception for the artist on Thursday November 13th from 6-8PM at M97 Project Space on Yueyang Road.
Since graduating from the MFA Photography Program at Yale University in 1981, Lois Conner’s artistic practice has been concentrated on depicting landscapes and their changing faces. In the last quarter of a century, the New York-based photographer has spent much of her time working in Asia, mainly in China and Vietnam.
The current exhibition, ”Reading Landscapes”, focuses on a reoccurring thread in Conner’s work, the lotus, as well as landscapes from the 1980s until today. Over the past 30 years of travel in China, the photographer’s depiction of the water plants makes them at once ethereal and earthbound. There emerges from her lyrical photographs a poetic balance of bloom and decay, and a strong visual dynamism between force, fluidity and fate. The lotus portrayed in Conner’s photographs becomes an almost anthropomorphic character poised in the endless circle of life, death and rebirth.
Lois Conner was born in 1951 in Pennsylvania, in the United States. She studied photography, first undergraduate studies at the Pratt Institute in New York, and later in the Photography MFA Program at Yale University. While studying photography at Yale, Conner was introduced to both the Chinese scroll painting and its cinematic narration, and to the landscapes of southern China. Both strongly influenced her later photographic practice, even until today.
Her work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows in prestigious institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum and the MoMA in New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Conner’s photographs are held in numerous important museum collections, including, besides the aforementioned three museums, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Australian National Gallery, among many others.
Since graduating from the MFA Photography Program at Yale University in 1981, Lois Conner’s artistic practice has been concentrated on depicting landscapes and their changing faces. In the last quarter of a century, the New York-based photographer has spent much of her time working in Asia, mainly in China and Vietnam.
The current exhibition, ”Reading Landscapes”, focuses on a reoccurring thread in Conner’s work, the lotus, as well as landscapes from the 1980s until today. Over the past 30 years of travel in China, the photographer’s depiction of the water plants makes them at once ethereal and earthbound. There emerges from her lyrical photographs a poetic balance of bloom and decay, and a strong visual dynamism between force, fluidity and fate. The lotus portrayed in Conner’s photographs becomes an almost anthropomorphic character poised in the endless circle of life, death and rebirth.
Lois Conner was born in 1951 in Pennsylvania, in the United States. She studied photography, first undergraduate studies at the Pratt Institute in New York, and later in the Photography MFA Program at Yale University. While studying photography at Yale, Conner was introduced to both the Chinese scroll painting and its cinematic narration, and to the landscapes of southern China. Both strongly influenced her later photographic practice, even until today.
Her work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows in prestigious institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum and the MoMA in New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Conner’s photographs are held in numerous important museum collections, including, besides the aforementioned three museums, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Australian National Gallery, among many others.
