Go See – London: Catherine Opie at Stephen Friedman Gallery through January 21, 2012
December 29th, 2011
Catherine Opie, Cathy (bed self-portrait) (1987). All Images via Stephen Friedman Gallery
San Francisco-based photographer and LGBT activist Catherine Opie showcases portrait and landscape photographs in her fourth solo exhibition at Stephen Friedman Gallery. Although the Girlfriends portraits have never been exhibited before, they chronicle almost 30 years of the artist’s social network, whereas Twelve Miles to the Horizon: Sunrises and Sunsets documents the sunrises and sunsets of an 11-day journey on a Hanjin cargo ship, which crossed from Korea to California via the Pacific Ocean in 2009. The exhibition’s opening in November was offset by Opie’s conversation with video artist and activist Emma Hedditch. The conversation also marked Hedditch’s latest film debut of Same Difference, which addresses children of same-sex partnerships as a response to Proposition 8.
Stephen Friedman Gallery installation view, featuring Twelve Miles to the Horizon Sunrises and Sunsets series (2011)
Catherine Opie, Gabby (back) (1989)
Opie’s photography is noted for its examination of marginalized sexual subculture, specifically the formal compositions of friends in what Stephen Friedman Gallery deems ‘queer leather culture.’ Girlfriends predates the better-known photo sets of the 1990s, which are also on view in the gallery. In the mid-90s, Opie photographed so-called ‘marriage portraits’ of families in San Francisco, Tulsa, and New York, in an effort to shed light on communities she felt were not typically endorsed by conventional American culture.
Catherine Opie cites influence by socially conscious Great Depression documentarian Walker Evans, German cultural photographer August Sander, and Dorothea Lange, who was known for her contrasts of human dignity despite cultural and physical oppression. Opie’s own work examines the concept of exclusion versus inclusion in terms of identity within community. Topics often address role-playing and sadomasochism as outliers in terms of politically charged campaigns against right-wing, religious, and heteronormative homophobia, as well as furthering AIDS awareness activism via charitable commission, drawing from her own peer experiences.
Catherine Opie, Sunset 9 (2009)
The new Twelve Miles to the Horizon: Sunrises and Sunsets series is a departure from Opie’s portrait trademark. Coupled sunrise and sunset photographs were commissioned by Hanjin Shipping Company, as per recommendations by MoMA Associate Director Kathy Halbreich and Ludwig-based Museum Director Kaspar Konig. The works explore the concepts of landscape and globalization, personifying the merits of the sea itself.
Prior to her noted black-and-white portraits, Opie’s 1995 Freeways series also focused on the inanimate. 40 small images of deserted freeways, with no passing car or human presence, were shot from below, allowing the angles to reidentify the everyday as strange and fantastic. In 2002, Opie revisited the landscape theme with Skyways and Icehouses, a photo series which traveled to Los Angeles, Minnesota and Milan, and Surfers in 2004, which went from Los Angeles to New York, London and Milan. Both exhibitions dealt with the tranquility of nature, and a sense of waiting: the icehouses and surfers, although in different climates, are reduced to specks on a wide plateau.
Catherine Opie, Capp St. House (1994)
The landscape series share their exploration of people with the portraits, in that individuality within society resonates. People are placed in context, whether it be one of surfing, ice fishing, or a redefined convention of family. The sense of waiting is similar, in its underlying political message of lack of certainty.
The symmetry of the Sunrises and Sunsets series provides a direct contrast to the high-energy positioning of the portraits, arguably juxtaposing nature’s thusly depicted inherent sense of calm with the sense of conflict in human interaction. Something so quotidian as a sunset, in appearing next to a person labeled out-of-the-norm by society, provokes thought about the suggestion of normalcy in nature altogether.
Opie was born in 1961 in Sandusky, Ohio. She studied at the San Francisco Art Institute before CalArts. Since her initial inclusion in the 1995 Whitney Biennial (in which she showcased again in 2004), Opie’s work has been exhibited in solo retrospectives at the Guggenheim in 2008, the Beirut Art Center in Lebanon in 2010, and the 2006 traveling exhibition 1999 & In and Around Home, which went from the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, to the Orange County Museum of Art in California, onto Cleveland, Ohio and Greensboro, North Carolina. Most recently, Opie showcased Empty and Full, at The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. A lesbian herself, the artist currently lives in Los Angeles with her partner, painter Julie Burleigh, and their son.
- A. Bregman
Related Links:
Stephen Friedman Gallery [Exhibition Site]
Catherine Opie – Overview [Guggenheim]
Catherine Opie at Stephen Friedman [artnews.org]
A Retrospective of Many Artists, All of Them One Woman [NYTimes]
Biography [Gladstone Gallery]
