Justine Kurland / Adam Harrison

1: Justine Kurland Of Woman Born.

Monte Clark Gallery is pleased to present the first Vancouver exhibition for renown New York photographer Justine Kurland entitled "Of Woman Born."

The photographs in the exhibition were taken by Kurland as she traveled nomadically across America towards the Pacific North West. Stopping at over 45 locations across North America, including national parks, communes, beaches and campgrounds, Kurland focused her attention on the subject of motherhood, photographing mothers with their children that she met while on her journey.

The title of the exhibition is taken from an essay written by Adrienne Rich that speaks to the trials, tribulations, and truths of motherhood. Kurland uses the landscape as a stage for her photographs, creating a sense of natural harmony between the subjects and their setting. Some have suggested an influence of the 19th Century British Fairy Paintings, by such artists as John Anster Fitzgerald, which also inspire the viewer to consider the fantastical. The resulting pictures of nudes posed on beaches, in foggy coastlines and under waterfalls gives this “timeless subject matter an otherworldly quality.” Kurland views the mothers and children as “banded together in their tribes, in communion with nature and searching home, where their wanderings cast a spell restoring the landscape to a prelapsarian state.” (Kurland 2006)

Kurland was born in 1969 and lives in New York City. She achieved her Masters from Yale University. Kurland is represented by Mitchell-Innes and Nash in New York, Victoria Miro Gallery in London and Monte Clark Gallery in Canada. Her photographs are included in a number international collections such as The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, Soloman R. Guggenheim Museum of Art, New York, NY, The International Centre of Photography, New York, NY, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Il, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

2: Adam Harrison Sculpture.

The Monte Clark Gallery is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition by Adam Harrison entitled "Sculpture."

Already well respected within the Vancovuer artistic community, Harrison works primarily with photography and has exhibited confidently in Canada to date. With a focus on photography, this new exhibition is comprised of three elements in three mediums that work together to consider the concept of stillness and immobility. Harrison continues to explore the relation to various methods of art making while turning his attention and consideration to the function, the process, and definition of sculpture.

On display in the back gallery space are three large scale black and white photographs of a workshop and courtyard of a modern day sculpture manufacturer. The photographs show the tools, process, and environment needed for the creation of mass-produced plaster and cement sculptures, which are “often found in the front lawns and gateways in and around Vancouver. While these decorative elements replace traditional 'unique' sculptures, the idea ofthat reproducibility relates to photography’s relations to the 'uniqueness' of the traditional forms of painting and drawing, while maintaining the stillness – the 'static moment' – that all four mediums are fundamentally based on.”

Also on view is Harrison's new film "Human Statue" that incorporates all three mediums in the show; film, photography and sculpture. The 35mm black and white film documents a man who works as a human statue, “someone who stands completely motionless for long periods of time to the amusement of spectators." During the course of the film, the camera slowly pans around the figure, showing that he is not moving and has essentially made himself into a sculpture. Film allows Harrison to demonstrate the immobility of the human sculpture as it is the only medium that can accurately depict the stillness and essence of the “Human Sculpture” itself....

Justine Kurland / Adam Harrison