Laurel Lueders: Square Foot | Non-Places
Annex:art is pleased to present the abstract photographs from American artist Laurel Lueders. In her exhibition titled "Square Foot | Non-Places" Lueders displays her new body of works which was created as part of a self-directed residency in Berlin.
Lueders completed an Annex:art residency in Berlin during the Summer of 2015, focusing on photography field work in in Berlin, Frankfurt, Leipzig, and Marburg, Germany; Vienna, Austria; Yerevan, Armenia, and JFK International Airport in NYC. As the basis for her compositions she made photographic abstractions emanating from the various international airports, train stations, hotel rooms, shopping malls, and subletted apartments in which she found herself enroute. This series resulted in thousands of photographs. For this solo exhibition, fifteen works have been selected and curated by Andranik Aroutiounian. This exhibition also features a collaborative multi-media work with Mr. Aroutiounian.
Using French anthropologist Marc Auge’s “Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity “ as a framework, Lueders attempts to urge the camera to release its own means of abstracting a “place that is not a place.” Relying on the camera’s mechanism, she exaggerates and manipulates its settings to convey a sense of location with no inherent structure or fixed narrative. She plays with camera shake, extended shutter speed, and time-lapse, employing the camera as a mark-making tool.
The abstract images reference a slice, that is, one square foot, of interior space. These architectural environments may allow for glimpses of an airport or hotel interior but remain unrecognizable as to specific place or era while suggestive of human presence and stopped time. The blurred wash of images create the hazy fog of jetlag, the experience of an in-between, unknown place, or a vague memory not fully formed. Playing with photography’s inherent ability to document, the images in the Square Foot | Non-Places series read as palimpsests, beneath which lie multiple histories waiting to be unearthed.
Square Foot | Non-Places is part of Annex:art's 2016 series of self-curated exhibitions which will be presented in Berlin and Saint Louis.
