 |
|
Christopher Wool (*1955)
From: East Broadway Breakdown
Inkjet-Print, Print-Edition 1/3
1994-95/2002
Collection of Prints and Drawings of the ETH, Zurich
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Between 1994 and 1995 the American artist Christopher Wool
took a series of black-and-white photographs in downtown New York, which he called East Broadway
Breakdown after a street in the Lower East Side, the area where he lived and worked. These pictures,
taken at night with a small format camera, depict streets typical of the neighbourhood, shabby shop
fronts, stairs in need of renovation which lead to anonymous rooms, barred entrances and dimly-lit
house fronts. Frequently the images, extreme in their contrasts, are hard to decipher: instead of clear
connections they show accidental forms emerging from skewed camera angles. As in Wool's paintings,
these photographs hover between abstraction and concrete representation, and force the observer to
re-examine his presuppositions of visual coherence. Once again Wool presents us with an alternative
idea of what an image can be.
In the winter of 2001/02 Wool took up these photos, created an image data bank using a scanner, and issued
an edition in three copies on photographic paper. The Collection of Prints and Drawings obtained one of
these in 2004.
Opening: Tuesday, January 31, 18.00
Contact person:
Paul Tanner (> e-mail)
|
|
Accompanying event
Wednesday, March 8, 18.00
Urban walker at
night
Reading with Tillmann Braun, Hochschule für Musik und Theater Zurich (School of Music and Dramatic Arts)
|