CADD Art Lab presents Flash: Photography from Dallas Galleries

by PegNews wire

The Contemporary Art Dealers of Dallas present the opening reception of “Flash: Photography from Dallas Galleries” at CADD Art Lab on Thursday, March 12, 5-8 p.m. Art Lies, the contemporary art quarterly, will also be launching their Spring Issue, #61, at the opening reception on Thursday, March 12. The exhibition will be on view until Thursday, April 23, 2009. Artists featured include Robert Boland, Alain Gerard Clement, Kelli Connell, Arcangel Constantini, Wouter Deruytter, Cedric Delsaux, Dornith Doherty, David Gibson, Susan Kae Grant, Anna Krachey, William Lamson, Margaret Meehan, Nic Nicosia, Andrew Ortiz, Mike Osborne, Joe Pflieger, Wendy Red Star, Tim Sullivan, Kevin Todora, Reinhard Zeigler, Jeff Zilm and more.

While not intended to be comprehensive, this exhibition is instead a quick snapshot or illumination (a flash) of current trends in photography including: digital manipulation, appropriation, performance, narrative, documentary, landscape, portraiture, deconstruction, video, and more, emphasizing that photography can capture everything from the extraordinary to the extremely mundane.

With the drive in communications towards greater and greater production and exchange of images--via mobile phones, virtual chat, the Internet, Facebook, and Flickr--photography is more ubiquitous than ever before. Literally, everyone is a photographer; so where does photography-as-art go, what does it mean?

While many have predicted the downfall of photography with each technological improvement--the Kodak Brownie in the hands of housewives was supposed to signal the end--each has instead marked a shift in the course providing a new set of circumstances to react to and against. At each new challenge, the dialogue between the photographer, the subject, and the viewer is enriched, becomes more layered, develops new muscle, and raises new questions.

Many of the photographers included in this exhibition are taking on the history of photography and the viewers’ expectations creating by hand what we assume to be manipulated, literally punching out a hole in photography to empty it, or creating crude digital montages when we expect to see a more convincing deception.

Photography fortifies the richness of our visual world and adds images from far-off, hard-to-reach places, or stolen quiet moments frozen in time; it is a vehicle to explore (or exploit) subculture, to document heroic acts, and to call out violence. Photography continues to create an escape, whether pushing a fantasy or reinforcing the real. It is always a tool; a means to an end, always guided by the intent behind the hand at the camera.

Art Lies Spring Issue Launch

Art Lies, the contemporary art quarterly, will be launching their Spring Issue, #61, at the opening reception on Thursday, March 12. CADD Art Lab is now a regular distributor for all Art Lies issues starting with #60. The magazine is available for $7.

Source: Contemporary Art Dealers of Dallas