FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
LOS ANGELES, CA
The Lake Project is an ongoing aerial exploration of the terrain in and around Owens Lake, in southeastern California of Highway 395. Our show opens on Saturday, April 26th with a reception for the artist from 6:00-8:00 p.m. There will be an artist’s talk the morning of the opening beginning at 11:00 a.m. The exhibition continues through May 24th and it is free and open to the public.
"Maisel is assembling a map from numerous vantage points, piecing together the complex overlay of human intervention natural systems, and the inherent chaos and logic that inform them both." - Diana Gaston, writer
At the beginning of the 20th century Owens Lake was depleted in order to divert water to a growing Los Angeles; a story well told in the film "Chinatown." As the Lake drained so began an environmental disaster that continues to this day, as carcinogenic particles from the dry lakebed dislodge in the strong winds, which regularly sweep through the region. From the aerial perspective Maisel’s photographs invite us to contemplate. The area is completely redefined and presented as an at once sublime and damaged wasteland. The drained lakebed with its gleaming copper pools and mottled red river banks represent a paradox: so much beauty existing alongside such environmental destruction.
Maisel photographed the Owens Lake area extensively on two separate occasions-in September 2001 and in June 2002. In the intervening months, and after decades of lawsuits and continued environmental damage, the EPA is once again flooding parts of the lake in an effort to diminish the toxic dust. This important body of work is featured in an upcoming article in Aperture Magazine’s fall issue and will be published as a book by Nazraeli Press in spring 2004.
For the last two decades, David Maisel’s photographic work has framed the complexities of various altered landscapes with equal measures of documentation, metaphor, beauty and despair. David Maisel lives in San Francisco where he is the vice-president of Photo Alliance, a Bay Area organization devoted to contemporary photography. His work is in the permanent collections of many museums such as LACMA, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Princeton University Art Museum.
Born: New York, NY, 1961
Education
Princeton University, Bachelor of Arts, 1984, summa cum laude
(Major areas: Photography, Visual Arts, Art History of the 19th and 20th centuries, Architecture, Landscape Architecture)
Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, 1988-89
(Major areas: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Earth Art)
Selected Exhibitions
2007
Phillips de Pury & Company, New York, NY. C
International Photo Magazine; September 7- 26,
2007. HERE
Boston University Art Gallery Boston, MA. To
Fly: Contemporary Aerial Photography; September 7- October
28, 2007; catalogue available, with cover image by Maisel. HERE
David Cunningham Projects, San Francisco, CA. Strange
Weather; September 1- September 29, 2007 HERE
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA. Dark
Matters: Artists See the Impossible; July 28- November
11, 2007 HERE
Bates College Museum of Art, Lewsiston, ME. Green
Horizons; June 9- December 9, 2007 HERE
2003
The Lake Project; solo exhibition, Bolinas Art Museum, Bolinas, CA. Curated by Rick Chapman.
The Lake Project; solo exhibition, Paul Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA.
Dangerous Beauty; solo exhibition, Schneider gallery, Chicago, IL.
Black Maps; solo exhibition, Society for Contemporary Photography, Kansas City, MO. Curated by Kathy Aron.
Abstraction and Photography; Von Lintel Gallery, NY, NY; featuring
William Eggleston, Adam Fuss, David Maisel, Vik Muniz, Jack Pierson,
Andres Serrano, and others.
2002
Picturing the Wilderness: Photographs by David Maisel, Macduff
Everton, & Josef Muench; Wildling Museum of Art, Los
Olivos, CA.
Curated by Karen Sinsheimer, curator of photography, Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
New Acquisitions/New Work/New Directions; Los Angeles County Museum of
Art. Curated by Robert Sobieszek and Tim Wride, curators of
photography.
Summer Group Show; Rose Gallery, Santa Monica, CA.
The Blue Earth; Benham Gallery, Seattle, WA
The Peter C. Bunnell Collection; Princeton University Art Museum,
Princeton, NJ. Curated by Toby Jurovics, associate curator of
photography.
2001
Captured Landscapes: Seven Views; Gallery @ 49, New York, NY. Curated by Mark Haven.
1995
Recent Acquisitions to the Permanent Collection; Brooklyn Museum of
Art, Brooklyn, NY.Curated by Barbara Millstein, curator of photography.
1992
Black Maps; Opsis Foundation, New York, NY. Curated by Allan Albert.
1991
Landscapes of Consequence; Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art;
Ridgefield, CT. Curated by Robert Mann, guest curator and gallerist.
1990
The New American Pastoral: Landscape Photography in the Age of
Questioning; International Museum of Photography, Rochester, NY, and
Whitney Museum of American Art at Equitable Center, New York, NY.
Curated by Robert Sobieszek/ brochure by Robert Sobieszek.
Selected
Teaching & Lecturing
guest speaker, Photo Alliance, ‘Bay Area Photography Now.’
guest speaker, Santa Barbara Museum of Art: Photography Collectors Group.
guest artist, Foto-graphix Books, San Francisco, CA.
guest speaker, Bolinas Art Museum, CA.
instructor, International Center of Photography, NY, NY.
instructor, Santa Fe Photographic Workshops.
guest lecturer, public lecture sponsored by Santa Fe Photographic Workshops.
faculty, Cambridge School, MA.
Selected Awards and Honors, etc.
2002-2003
Vice President, Board of Directors, for Photo Alliance, a Bay Area
non-profit institution devoted to the support and creation of
contemporary photography.
2001
SF Camerawork; participating artist in their Fine Print program.
1992
Opsis Foundation Photography Award.
1990
National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts, Individual Visual Artists’ Fellowship.
Finalist for Infinity Award, International Center of Photography.
1984
Princeton University, B.A., summa cum laude, department of
Art & Archaeology.
Princeton University, Francis LeMoyne Page Award in the Visual Arts.
Residency
Visiting Scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Fall,
2007.