Fasanenstraße 30, Berlin
Douglas Crimp - Before Pictures
New York City 1967-1977
17 East 82nd Street, New York
Neven-DuMont-Straße 17, Köln
Pictures, Before and After -
An Exhibition for Douglas Crimp
Fasanenstraße 30, Berlin
Moyra Davey & Peter Hujar
The Shabbiness of Beauty
2021, 128 pages, hardcover, fully illustrated in b/w and color,
17 x 24 cm
Euro 40,-
This book originated out of an exhibition that Moyra Davey organized at Galerie Buchholz in Berlin. For this, Moyra Davey delved into Peter Hujar’s archives and emerged mainly with little-known, scarcely seen images. In response to these, Davey created her own images that draw out an idiosyncratic selection of shared subjects. Side by side, the powerfully composed images admire, tease, and enhance one another in the manner of fierce friends, forming a visual exploration of physicality and sexuality that crackles with wit, tenderness, and perspicacity. Spiritually anchored in New York City - even as they range out to rural corners of Quebec and Pennsylvania - these images crystallize tensions between city and country, human and animal. Nudes pose with unruly chickens; human bodies are abstracted toward topography; seascapes and urban landscapes share the same tremulous plasticity. These continuities are punctuated by stark differences of approach: Davey’s self-aware postmodernism against Hujar’s humanism and embrace of darkroom manipulation. The rich dialogue between these photographs is personal and angular, ultimately offering an illuminating reintroduction to each artist through communion with the other’s work. The book contains a new text by Eileen Myles and is published by Mack Books, London.