Uta Barth - …and to draw a bright white line with light : Stockholm

Andréhn-Schiptjenko is pleased to present new work by Uta Barth. The exhibition at the gallery presents …and to draw a bright white line with light and Compositions of Light on White. 

In keeping with her signature operating methods, Uta Barth takes a simple observation — the tenuous light filtering through a curtain — and turns it into a complex perceptual experience. The artist modifies everyday domestic spaces in ways that are nearly imperceptible, transforming them with her camera into fertile ground for exploring subtle changes of light and atmosphere. While photography generally seeks a fixed subject matter, Barth focuses her attention elsewhere:

The body of work …and to draw a bright white line with light was initially conceived for her solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. This sequence of photographs, presented in Barth’s signature diptychs and triptychs, traces a wavering band of light as its slowly winds its way across the curtains of the artist’s home over one single afternoon. Taken together, the images of such an ordinary observation are transmuted into a lyrical study of the passage of time, intensifying our sensitivity to subtle changes and our awareness of the very act of seeing.

Clearly resonating with …and to draw a bright white line with light the series Compositions of Light on White comprises quasi-minimalist works depicting spaces of Barth’s bedroom converted into Mondrian-like compositions by the evening light that, during only a single week of the entire year, falls perpendicular to the geometry of the room’s spare white built-in closets and drawers. By gradually opening and closing the window blinds, the artist directs grids of filtered light so that here the furniture, instead of the curtains, co-opts the shadows from the window to create geometric abstractions. This compositional play produces delicate works underpinned by a strong sense of geometric formalism, further accentuated by the interplay between flat, painterly abstractions of light and sudden changes in volume and depth that undermine our visual reading of volume and space.

In the most recent series, Deep Blue Day, 2012, the artist returns to the curtains once again, but this time making her agency more open. Here, her hand enters the picture frame and visibly takes control of the light itself, regulating its flow by opening the curtain and rearranging its folds. Deep Blue Day includes photos, inverted in cobalt blue negative, of images taken a few seconds apart. Besides speaking to the basic photographic form, these negative images make details of the photo in positive more perceptible, such as the texture of curtains’ linen, while also bringing to mind the act of drawing or calligraphy.

Uta Barth (Berlin, 1958) lives and works in Los Angeles. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2012. The Fellowship is a grant for individuals who have shown exceptional creativity in their work and the promise to do more. Her work has been exhibited widely and is well represented in public and private collections, including the Moderna Museet and Magasin 3 Stockholm, Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection in New York, The Tate Modern, London; MOCA, LACMA and The Getty Museum in Los Angeles, MCA Chicago and many others. Recent solo-exhibitions include venues such as The Art Institute of Chicago and Henry Art Gallery, Seattle and upcoming projects are, among others, a solo exhibition at SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia and a Public Art Project at the UCSF Medical Campus; San Francisco.

The three series now exhibited are the subject of a monograph; Uta Barth, to draw with light, published by Blind Spot.