Catherine Opie : 1999 & In and Around Home
On view September 29th, 2006 through December 30th, 2006
The documentation of America has long intrigued photographers such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Berenice Abbott, Lee Friedlander, and Diane Arbus. Los Angeles-based artist Catherine Opie redefines this genre with vibrant photographs that capture subjects, animate or not, that reflect an essence, identity, or character of America. Opie presents to us a conceptual portrait of our ethos in all its diversity and complexity.
Renowned for her photographic series of communities and urban landscapes, Opie is concerned with expanding notions of identity and community. From her studies of lesbian families, surfers, empty freeways, and the neighborhood developments of Valencia, CA, Opie documents a specific cultural identity. Opie's presentations are as varied as her subjects. Her rich and lush images, which alternate between large and small as well as black-and-white or color, are stunning both in content and technical proficiency.
In celebration of her 2004 Larry Aldrich Foundation Award, Opie's exhibition debuts a new series of intimate and politically charged photographs titled In and Around the Home. As the artist has stated, "[the series] has its own sense of Americana…, but relies on t.v., my family (a queer family), and the events that take place in my neighborhood to represent a microcosm of America." In and Around Home provides a window into the tender, domestic world the artist has built for herself, and the public, political world that frames and sometimes threatens it. This new body of work is shown together with 1999, a series taken while Opie was on a road trip across the U.S. at the millennium that both captures iconic Americana and portrays the expansive American landscape. 1999 & In and Around the Home offers a unique perspective from an artist who has significantly enriched our visual culture.
About the artist
Born in Sandusky, OH, Opie received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA. She taught at Yale University and is currently a professor of photography at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she lives and works. Opie's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in group and solo exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Musée National d'art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Catherine Opie: 1999 & In and Around Home is organized by The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and the Orange County Museum of Art. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated 96-page catalogue available in ARTspace for $45 / Members $40.
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