Lorna Bieber: Image Myths

Image Gallery Exhibition File Catalog

April 10 - June 3, 2012

American photographer Lorna Bieber creates enigmatic images and immersive photographic installations that emerge through the careful study and delicate transformation of pre-existing images appropriated from both common and esoteric sources. One of the most beautiful and haunting things about Lorna Bieber’s photographs is the pull of time that they embody, the way that one is drawn into and through them, as on a journey. The journey unfolds before the viewer in a lattice of paths across a mountainside, or in the eyes of a dog—paused for a moment on the way to someplace we do not know—but can imagine. The photographs begin with found images; they originate in an unknown place, at an indeterminate moment, and through someone else’s eyes, and are then embraced by the psyche of the artist through intense looking, and careful arranging. Areas of each image are singled out and altered in relationship to the whole, and this creates a vision of place that feels strangely composited like the landscape of a dream. Surely part of the reason that we know we have seen or visited these places before, is because the hand of the artist summons us into the work. Roland Barthes referred to this as the punctum of the image, the mysteriously charged space of affinity. Like myths, Bieber’s photographs engender shared memories, both real and fantastical. 

Saturday, April 21 at 5:00 pm, Gallery Talk and Reception with the Artist at the Cooley
Free and open to the public.

On view Tuesday, April 10—Sunday, June 3 at the Cooley
Free and open to the public.

A related exhibition, Lorna Bieber: Fractured Narratives, opened at the Addison Gallery of American Art in October 2011, curated by Allison Kemmerer, Curator of Art after 1950 and of Photography. The title, Image Myths, is drawn from an essay by curator Lisa Hostetler, Curator of Photographs, Milwaukie Art Museum. For one weekduring the exhibition, Lorna Bieber will be in residence at Reed College, working with students and faculty, and with Portland Public School students through the Open Gallery Program, the Cooley’s no-cost educational outreach initiative. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Bieber’s work has been widely exhibited in one-person exhibitions at museums and galleries including: the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA; the Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, FL; the Houston Center for Photography, Houston, TX; C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, MD; Julie Saul Gallery, New York, NY; McKenzie Fine Art, NY; the Bronx Museum, NY; and ABC No Rio, New York, NY. Bieber’s work has also been featured in group exhibitions at museums and galleries including: the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL; the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; White Columns, New York, NY; and Franklin Furnace, New York, NY.

Bieber has completed fellowships and residencies at the Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio Study & Conference Center, Bellagio, Italy; the MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH; Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY; the Bogliasco Foundation, Genoa, Italy; and the Camargo Foundation, Cassis, FR. Bieber’s work is held in distinguished collections including: the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris; the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; Franklin Furnace, NY; the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; I.B.M., NY; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; the Norton Museumof Art, West Palm Beach, FL; the New York Public Library, NY; Neuberger and Berman, NY; Prudential Insurance Company, NY; and the Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, FL.

An illustrated publication accompanies the exhibition, with an introduction by curator Stephanie Snyder and an essay by art historian Doris Chon. The publication is availablefree of charge at the Cooley Gallery.