Mario Cresci:
Geometries / Epiphanies
14 Mar—24 Jun 2025Geometries / Epiphanies is the first exhibition in the UK of photographer Mario Cresci, curated by Luca Fiore. Presenting works created from 1967 to 2025, the exhibition focuses on Cresci’s experimental photography practice, which drew inspiration from Pop Art, Conceptual art and Industrial design, and his long-term artistic project documenting the southern Italian town of Matera. Cresci is one of the key voices of Italian photography belonging to an avant-garde generation, including Luigi Ghirri and Guido Guidi, who brought the medium into the realm of contemporary art.
In the early 1970s, Cresci collaborated with the interdisciplinary research group Polis to produce an urban study of Matera, a town that had become a symbol of southern Italian ‘backwardness’ in the years following the publication of Carlo Levi’s memoir ‘Cristo si è fermato a Eboli’. Cresci was encouraged to use his camera to open dialogues with local residents and give them an opportunity to represent themselves through their histories and traditions, such as farming and craftsmanship. The project resulted in a series of images that continue to be influential in Cresci’s artistic practice to this day. During his many years in Matera, Cresci focused on the region’s material culture, particularly the objects crafted by local artisans, such as tools and hand-carved wooden toys, which the artist interpreted as a portal to the town’s culture, memory, and sentiment.
Throughout his career Cresci has regularly returned to Matera and nearby towns to use the material and objects he had collected during his early years in the area. One example is Cresci’s ‘Scanprint’ series, in which he generated new images of Matera's handicraft objects using a digital scanner, subverting traditional photographic methods.
Cresci also developed his experimental photography techniques in work outside of Matera. In 1968 the artist moved to Rome, where the L’Attico gallery commissioned him to photograph exhibitions of leading figures in the Italian art scene at the time, including Pino Pascali, Jannis Kounellis, Eliseo Mattiacci, Michelangelo Pistoletto, and Alighiero Boetti. Here he developed the conviction that photography could no longer be simply exhibited by hanging it on a wall.
“I think of my work as a circular path where change is from time to time, not a past that has been overcome, but the possibility of a future reinterpretation." - Mario Cresci
Mario Cresci, born 1942 in Chiavari, Italy, lives and works in Bergamo.
Cresci attended the school of Industrial Design in Venice, and currently teaches at the Fondazione Fotografia in Modena and at the ISIA University in Urbino. He has held solo exhibitions at museums and institutions including MAXXI, National Museum of 21st Centrury Arts, Rome, CAMERA-Centro Italiano per la Fotografia, Torino, FMAV, Palazzo Santa Margherita, Modena, and GAMeC-The Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo. Important publications include Matera. Immagini e Documenti (1975), Misurazioni. Fotografia e Territorio (1979) and Segni Migranti (2019), winner of the Prix du Livre Historique, at Les Rencontres de la Photographie 2020 of Arles.
Luca Fiore is a writer, critic and curator of photography based in Milan, Italy. He is a regular contributor to Aperture, Il Foglio, Domani, Il Giornale dell’Arte and Tracce. He curated the exhibition ‘Mon cher Abbé Bionaz! Mario Cresci for the Aosta Valley’, at Museo Castello Gamba in Châtillon in 2023.
In the early 1970s, Cresci collaborated with the interdisciplinary research group Polis to produce an urban study of Matera, a town that had become a symbol of southern Italian ‘backwardness’ in the years following the publication of Carlo Levi’s memoir ‘Cristo si è fermato a Eboli’. Cresci was encouraged to use his camera to open dialogues with local residents and give them an opportunity to represent themselves through their histories and traditions, such as farming and craftsmanship. The project resulted in a series of images that continue to be influential in Cresci’s artistic practice to this day. During his many years in Matera, Cresci focused on the region’s material culture, particularly the objects crafted by local artisans, such as tools and hand-carved wooden toys, which the artist interpreted as a portal to the town’s culture, memory, and sentiment.
Throughout his career Cresci has regularly returned to Matera and nearby towns to use the material and objects he had collected during his early years in the area. One example is Cresci’s ‘Scanprint’ series, in which he generated new images of Matera's handicraft objects using a digital scanner, subverting traditional photographic methods.
Cresci also developed his experimental photography techniques in work outside of Matera. In 1968 the artist moved to Rome, where the L’Attico gallery commissioned him to photograph exhibitions of leading figures in the Italian art scene at the time, including Pino Pascali, Jannis Kounellis, Eliseo Mattiacci, Michelangelo Pistoletto, and Alighiero Boetti. Here he developed the conviction that photography could no longer be simply exhibited by hanging it on a wall.
“I think of my work as a circular path where change is from time to time, not a past that has been overcome, but the possibility of a future reinterpretation." - Mario Cresci
Mario Cresci, born 1942 in Chiavari, Italy, lives and works in Bergamo.
Cresci attended the school of Industrial Design in Venice, and currently teaches at the Fondazione Fotografia in Modena and at the ISIA University in Urbino. He has held solo exhibitions at museums and institutions including MAXXI, National Museum of 21st Centrury Arts, Rome, CAMERA-Centro Italiano per la Fotografia, Torino, FMAV, Palazzo Santa Margherita, Modena, and GAMeC-The Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo. Important publications include Matera. Immagini e Documenti (1975), Misurazioni. Fotografia e Territorio (1979) and Segni Migranti (2019), winner of the Prix du Livre Historique, at Les Rencontres de la Photographie 2020 of Arles.
Luca Fiore is a writer, critic and curator of photography based in Milan, Italy. He is a regular contributor to Aperture, Il Foglio, Domani, Il Giornale dell’Arte and Tracce. He curated the exhibition ‘Mon cher Abbé Bionaz! Mario Cresci for the Aosta Valley’, at Museo Castello Gamba in Châtillon in 2023.
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Hélène Binet: Oscillations
from Villa Saraceno to Lunuganga Garden
6 Dec—31 Jan 2025Oscillations is Hélène Binet’s second solo show at Large Glass. A newly commissioned text by Emily LaBarge accompanies the exhibition, an excerpt of which below:
There are lines straight and curved, sometimes both, or indeterminate, bulging here only to pursue an even course there, or take a gentle slope, or turn a corner, or overlap with other lines and shapes, straights and narrows, to form composite configurations, or breaking off here and there and then passing out of the frame somewhere into the distance where they may or may not continue, up or down, rounded or even, you choose. There is light and dark and lighter and darker and lightest and darkest, because, after all, this is what photography consists of, along with time and its passage — an eternal oscillation that shapes how and what we see.
A view inside a view, a door inside a door, a column behind a column behind a column bisecting an elegant arched doorway, exacting Renaissance proportions, sightlines from one side of a Palazzo to another, and then the other side to the other, as if presenting apertures within apertures for the aperture of the camera to close upon and seize. In Hélène Binet’s work, repetition, rhythm, sequence, and seriality are the order of the day, none of which are possible without the passage of time — and with it, light, ever the photographer’s loyal source. She refers to her projects, most of which take place in specific architectural locations, as essays, the form that is, in its best iterations, famously mobile, intuitive, wayward, proceeding slowly, with curiosity, according to a perceived logic that cannot be forced or quickened. It is, in short, akin to looking, hard, carefully, again and again, and waiting to see what happens.
Hélène Binet, born 1959 in Sorengo, Switzerland, lives in London.
Binet studied photography at the Instituto Europeo di Design in Rome. Over the past 40 years, she has travelled the world to photograph historic and contemporary buildings, as well as projects in the making. Her work has been exhibited at distinguished museums and institutions internationally, including the Salone del Mobile in Milan; Royal Academy of Arts in London; Power Station of Art, in Shanghai; Bauhaus Archive in Berlin and the 13th International Architecture Biennale di Venezia. She has produced a large number of books including the recently published ‘Hélène Binet’ by Marco Iuliano and Martino Stierli (Lund Humphries).
Binet is the recipient of the 2019 Ada Louise Huxtable Prize. She was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2007.
Emily LaBarge is a Canadian writer based in London. She is a regular contributor to the New York Times and 4Columns. Her first book, Dog Days, will be published in the UK by Peninsula Press in 2025.
There are lines straight and curved, sometimes both, or indeterminate, bulging here only to pursue an even course there, or take a gentle slope, or turn a corner, or overlap with other lines and shapes, straights and narrows, to form composite configurations, or breaking off here and there and then passing out of the frame somewhere into the distance where they may or may not continue, up or down, rounded or even, you choose. There is light and dark and lighter and darker and lightest and darkest, because, after all, this is what photography consists of, along with time and its passage — an eternal oscillation that shapes how and what we see.
A view inside a view, a door inside a door, a column behind a column behind a column bisecting an elegant arched doorway, exacting Renaissance proportions, sightlines from one side of a Palazzo to another, and then the other side to the other, as if presenting apertures within apertures for the aperture of the camera to close upon and seize. In Hélène Binet’s work, repetition, rhythm, sequence, and seriality are the order of the day, none of which are possible without the passage of time — and with it, light, ever the photographer’s loyal source. She refers to her projects, most of which take place in specific architectural locations, as essays, the form that is, in its best iterations, famously mobile, intuitive, wayward, proceeding slowly, with curiosity, according to a perceived logic that cannot be forced or quickened. It is, in short, akin to looking, hard, carefully, again and again, and waiting to see what happens.
Hélène Binet, born 1959 in Sorengo, Switzerland, lives in London.
Binet studied photography at the Instituto Europeo di Design in Rome. Over the past 40 years, she has travelled the world to photograph historic and contemporary buildings, as well as projects in the making. Her work has been exhibited at distinguished museums and institutions internationally, including the Salone del Mobile in Milan; Royal Academy of Arts in London; Power Station of Art, in Shanghai; Bauhaus Archive in Berlin and the 13th International Architecture Biennale di Venezia. She has produced a large number of books including the recently published ‘Hélène Binet’ by Marco Iuliano and Martino Stierli (Lund Humphries).
Binet is the recipient of the 2019 Ada Louise Huxtable Prize. She was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2007.
Emily LaBarge is a Canadian writer based in London. She is a regular contributor to the New York Times and 4Columns. Her first book, Dog Days, will be published in the UK by Peninsula Press in 2025.
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Paris Photo 2024
Main Sector, Booth B11
7 – 10 November 2024
Preview Day 6 November (invitation only)
Grand Palais
3 avenue du Général Eisenhower
75008 Paris
www.parisphoto.com
For Paris Photo 2024, Large Glass presents a solo show of works by American photographer Mark Ruwedel. We spotlight Ruwedel’s on-going project ‘Los Angeles: Landscapes of Four Ecologies’ (2014- ) with the title making reference to British architectural critic Reyner Banham’s 1971 book, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies).
For three decades, Mark Ruwedel has photographed American deserts and wild spaces that bear traces of human intervention: abandoned remains of early railway lines, brightly sinister nuclear test sites, ruined desert homes outside Los Angeles. “I have come to think of the land as being an enormous historical archive,” he wrote in 1996. “I am interested in revealing the narratives contained within the landscape, especially those places where the land reveals itself as being both an agent of change and the field of human endeavour.”
For the Project, Ruwedel has identified four overlapping landscape ‘systems’: The Rivers, The Eastern Edge, The Hills and Canyons, and The Western Edge. His work captures the dynamic landscapes of the greater LA metropolitan area, shaped by floods, fires, earthquakes and landslides; a place overwritten by industry, irrigation, urban planning and abiding fantasies about authentic wilderness.
Mark Ruwedel has won numerous awards for this outstanding work, including the Scotiabank Photography Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship (both 2014). He was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize (2019) and for the Prix Pictet (2021). His work is included in major museum collections including those of the Los Angeles County Art Museum (Los Angeles), The Metropolitan Museum (New York), National Gallery of Art (Washington), The National Gallery (Canada); Stichting Foundation (Brussels), Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris), Tate Modern and the Victoria and Albert Museum (London).
For three decades, Mark Ruwedel has photographed American deserts and wild spaces that bear traces of human intervention: abandoned remains of early railway lines, brightly sinister nuclear test sites, ruined desert homes outside Los Angeles. “I have come to think of the land as being an enormous historical archive,” he wrote in 1996. “I am interested in revealing the narratives contained within the landscape, especially those places where the land reveals itself as being both an agent of change and the field of human endeavour.”
For the Project, Ruwedel has identified four overlapping landscape ‘systems’: The Rivers, The Eastern Edge, The Hills and Canyons, and The Western Edge. His work captures the dynamic landscapes of the greater LA metropolitan area, shaped by floods, fires, earthquakes and landslides; a place overwritten by industry, irrigation, urban planning and abiding fantasies about authentic wilderness.
Mark Ruwedel has won numerous awards for this outstanding work, including the Scotiabank Photography Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship (both 2014). He was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize (2019) and for the Prix Pictet (2021). His work is included in major museum collections including those of the Los Angeles County Art Museum (Los Angeles), The Metropolitan Museum (New York), National Gallery of Art (Washington), The National Gallery (Canada); Stichting Foundation (Brussels), Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris), Tate Modern and the Victoria and Albert Museum (London).
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Gerry Johansson:
In Plain View
20 Sep—2 Nov 2024In Plain View is the first solo show of renowned Swedish photographer Gerry Johansson in London and we have selected 30 exceptional photographs that span the six decades of his career.
“There are several common denominators found throughout Gerry Johansson’s work that become apparent with even casual viewing” writes Jeffrey Ladd in the accompanying text. “Some of those shared characteristics are obvious at first glance, for instance; the physicality of several of Johansson's books and exhibition print sizes, the apparent use of traditional analog materials; while other traits like the sense of stillness, the seeming perpetual daylight, and the camera's steady almost drone-like orientation to the world set an underlying commonality. Perhaps a trait most recognizable is his choice of working primarily in black and white. Black and white photography has its way of automatically referencing the distant past and many photographers question its use considering the ease of the color processes today but Johansson's explanation for the choice rings honest and unpretentious, linked not with an artistic "strategy," but with choices informed by the pleasures of perception.
What I find refreshing about Johansson's work is the sense one feels of his enjoyment of moving through an unfamiliar landscape and simply taking in what is before him. The work seems formed not in the mind first, but through the physical footsteps he takes and directness at which he looks. This is not unique to Johansson by any stretch, but the sense of solitude and fullness of his frames are a reward for those who pause and look.”
Gerry Johansson, born 1945 in Örebro, lives in Höganäs, Sweden. Johansson studied graphic design in Gothenburg in the late 1960s. His work has been exhibited at distinguished museums and institutions internationally, including the Kunsthalle Rostock in Germany; Museum of Modern Art in Bogota, Colombia; Hasselblad Center in Göteborg and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden. Johansson has produced a large number of books including the recently published ‘Spanish Summer’ and ‘American Winter’, both MACK and was awarded the Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s Award and the prestigious Lars Tunbjörk Prize.
Jeffrey Ladd is an American photographer based in Cologne, Germany. Ladd has written extensively about photography. He is a co-founder of Errata Editions and author of A Field Measure Survey of American Architecture (MACK).
“There are several common denominators found throughout Gerry Johansson’s work that become apparent with even casual viewing” writes Jeffrey Ladd in the accompanying text. “Some of those shared characteristics are obvious at first glance, for instance; the physicality of several of Johansson's books and exhibition print sizes, the apparent use of traditional analog materials; while other traits like the sense of stillness, the seeming perpetual daylight, and the camera's steady almost drone-like orientation to the world set an underlying commonality. Perhaps a trait most recognizable is his choice of working primarily in black and white. Black and white photography has its way of automatically referencing the distant past and many photographers question its use considering the ease of the color processes today but Johansson's explanation for the choice rings honest and unpretentious, linked not with an artistic "strategy," but with choices informed by the pleasures of perception.
What I find refreshing about Johansson's work is the sense one feels of his enjoyment of moving through an unfamiliar landscape and simply taking in what is before him. The work seems formed not in the mind first, but through the physical footsteps he takes and directness at which he looks. This is not unique to Johansson by any stretch, but the sense of solitude and fullness of his frames are a reward for those who pause and look.”
Gerry Johansson, born 1945 in Örebro, lives in Höganäs, Sweden. Johansson studied graphic design in Gothenburg in the late 1960s. His work has been exhibited at distinguished museums and institutions internationally, including the Kunsthalle Rostock in Germany; Museum of Modern Art in Bogota, Colombia; Hasselblad Center in Göteborg and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden. Johansson has produced a large number of books including the recently published ‘Spanish Summer’ and ‘American Winter’, both MACK and was awarded the Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s Award and the prestigious Lars Tunbjörk Prize.
Jeffrey Ladd is an American photographer based in Cologne, Germany. Ladd has written extensively about photography. He is a co-founder of Errata Editions and author of A Field Measure Survey of American Architecture (MACK).
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![Installation View After Mallarmé Part 2; Peter Downsbrough 27.06.2018 [Two Pipes (Not Random)] 2018 and Susan Morris Plumb Line Drawing No.11 2009 Photo: Stephen White and Co](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/44354c1bfb85ae43031a2108a2a43fad0fbb1380b3d80ffb3669f8c40cd13196/After-Mallarme-install-LG-1-PDSM_Stephen-White-and-Co.jpg)
![Peter Downsbrough 27.06.2018 [Two Pipes (Not Random)] 2018 Photo: Stephen White and Co](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ec6b4386a9584364e8d2aca97eb5d75733ea8a41103ac9fba5b65f596fe58461/Peter-Downsbrough-27.06.2018-Two-Pipes-Not-Random_Stephen-White-and-Co.jpg)
![Installation View After Mallarmé; detail of Joëlle Tuerlinckx Atlas Room LARGE GLASS Front room (+ vitrine) (Original materiel Page for ‘ATLAS of WALLS LARGE GLASS SPACE VOLUME #1’) and Clay Here (#3) ou Manuel Cross-stain ou la constellation du peut-être [the constellation of maybe] (élément #4c) 2024 Photo: Stephen White and Co](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2906eaa379efa978c1df9201f7976fdc209ce27ac0bb1efc98a170c46c1dadd7/After-Mallarme-install-LG-18_Stephen-White-and-Co.jpg)
![Installation View After Mallarmé; Joëlle Tuerlinckx There (#1),(#2),(#3), ou Centre de gravité ‘Poids chromé 23 Kg, 13.1 Kg, 6 Kg [Centre of gravity, weight]', ou La Constellation du Peut-être [The Constellation of Maybe] (élément #3b,c,d) exhibition materiel activated by an operator as per instructions 2022 Photo: Stephen White and Co](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0b6a779408c348ced773d41933642ad8b07b8fadb0040ee846d5077054d92da6/After-Mallarme-install-LG-14_Stephen-White-and-Co.jpg)
After Mallarmé
12 Apr—19 Jul 2024Part 1
the page…the place…
12 April–11 May
Joëlle Tuerlinckx
Peter Downsbrough
Marine Hugonnier
Glenn Ligon
Part 2
...contingency, the operator…
16 May–15 June
Toby Christian
Susan Morris
Hendl Helen Mirra
Peter Downsbrough
Joëlle Tuerlinckx
Part 3
…perhaps...a constellation
21 June–19 July
John Murphy
Cerith Wyn Evans
Florian Hecker
Emma McNally
Joëlle Tuerlinckx
Three rolling exhibitions will trace aspects of the legacy of the poet Stéphane Mallarmé in contemporary art, drawing on his poem 'A throw of the dice will never abolish chance' and his posthumously published notes towards a 'book performance'. Mallarmé has had a great influence on visual art, ranging from text and newspaper collage in Cubism, through Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, to Marcel Broodthaers. Rather than direct influence, these exhibitions will 'read' the work of certain contemporary artists through Mallarmé.
The exhibitions will open with an exploration of the page as a place and the place, including the gallery, as a page, on which and in which the work of art becomes an event and a journey. Could these 'pages' form a book, and what, then, would be the relation between book and world.
Contingency is a state of potential, where things could turn out otherwise. Chance may be the outcome of a procedure, like throwing dice. The work of art becomes an 'operation'. During Mallarmé's speculative book performance, an 'operator' was to place pages at random on the shelves of a lacquer cabinet. Might the art work achieve a condition of necessity without abolishing chance?'
A throw of the dice' moves from shipwreck in a stormy sea to a constellation where the stars in the night sky are reflected by the letters on the page. The reading of the constellation follows catastrophe, the experience of nothingness and the abyss. It asks the question of how we find meaning in the face of disaster, of the past, and to come. As in Mallarmé's book performance, art takes place as the 'entr'acte' between world and cosmos.
After Mallarmé is curated by Michael Newman.
Michael Newman is Professor of Art Writing in the Art Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has published numerous essays on modern and contemporary artists as well as thematic essays on the wound, the horizon, contingency, memory, drawing, and nonsense.
Glenn Ligon’s work appears courtesy Thomas Dane Gallery, London.
Cerith Wyn Evans’s work appears courtesy White Cube, London.
The exhibitions will open with an exploration of the page as a place and the place, including the gallery, as a page, on which and in which the work of art becomes an event and a journey. Could these 'pages' form a book, and what, then, would be the relation between book and world.
Contingency is a state of potential, where things could turn out otherwise. Chance may be the outcome of a procedure, like throwing dice. The work of art becomes an 'operation'. During Mallarmé's speculative book performance, an 'operator' was to place pages at random on the shelves of a lacquer cabinet. Might the art work achieve a condition of necessity without abolishing chance?'
A throw of the dice' moves from shipwreck in a stormy sea to a constellation where the stars in the night sky are reflected by the letters on the page. The reading of the constellation follows catastrophe, the experience of nothingness and the abyss. It asks the question of how we find meaning in the face of disaster, of the past, and to come. As in Mallarmé's book performance, art takes place as the 'entr'acte' between world and cosmos.
After Mallarmé is curated by Michael Newman.
Michael Newman is Professor of Art Writing in the Art Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has published numerous essays on modern and contemporary artists as well as thematic essays on the wound, the horizon, contingency, memory, drawing, and nonsense.
Glenn Ligon’s work appears courtesy Thomas Dane Gallery, London.
Cerith Wyn Evans’s work appears courtesy White Cube, London.
Toby Christian, Peter Downsbrough, Cerith Wyn Evans, Florian Hecker, Marine Hugonnier, Glenn Ligon, Emma McNally, Hendl Helen Mirra, Susan Morris, John Murphy, Joëlle Tuerlinckx
Notes on After Mallarmé Part 1
Notes on After Mallarmé Part 2
Notes on After Mallarmé Part 3
Enquiries
press: press
sales: sales
other: LG
Press
Art Monthly no 479: ‘After Mallarmé Part Two ...contingency, the operator / Part Three ... perhaps ... a constellation’, Andrew Chesher, September 2024
Art Monthly no 477: ‘After Mallarmé Part One - the page... the place...’, Deborah Schultz, June 2024
Notes on After Mallarmé Part 1
Notes on After Mallarmé Part 2
Notes on After Mallarmé Part 3
Enquiries
press: press
sales: sales
other: LG
Press
Art Monthly no 479: ‘After Mallarmé Part Two ...contingency, the operator / Part Three ... perhaps ... a constellation’, Andrew Chesher, September 2024
Art Monthly no 477: ‘After Mallarmé Part One - the page... the place...’, Deborah Schultz, June 2024