Darren Almond & Janice Kerbel

The Horticultural Society of New York Gallery is pleased to present selections from Darren Almond's ongoing series of 'Fullmoon' photographs, in tandem with selections from Janice Kerbel's 'Home Climate Gardens' series, as a part of our distinctive program exhibiting classical and contemporary artworks that investigate botanics and horticulture.

In the past three years, London based artists Almond and Kerbel have assembled series of work in which they present impossible landscapes. Almond works with photography and Kerbel with drawing. This exhibition aims to juxtapose the two projects and foreground how their work re-thinks the genres of landscape and still-life painting and drawing.

Almond makes the work in his 'Fullmoon' series by setting a camera up before a landscape in the night time and opening the aperture for a long duration. Through this process, he produces full colour photographs. Yet the landscapes are 'impossible'. The human eye cannot see the landscapes as the photographs show them: only the camera can 'see in the dark' in this way.

Kerbel plans gardens for various kinds of interior spaces. The gardens are intricately designed so the various plant species in them can co-exist next to each other, allowing the gardener to maintain them easily in the particular environment. Once again these gardens are 'impossible': they remain as intricate drawings, entirely feasible yet never to be planted.

While both artists might be seen to be interested in dreamy or fantastical landscapes, their work also suggests that for them, traditional ways of depicting landscapes or flowers have become impossible. The desire to represent the natural world remains, but new modes of representation become urgent.

Darren Almond's works appear courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, White Cube, London and Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin. Almond has been featured in exhibitions at museums worldwide including the ICA London, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Kunsthalle Zurich, The Renaissance Society, De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam and in Brooklyn Museum's Sensation exhibition. Two publications of his work, K21 and Darren Almond are in print along with various articles in Frieze, Flash Art and Artforum. Almond was shortlisted for the UK's coveted Turner Prize this year.

Janice Kerbel's works appear courtesy of Galerie Karin Guenther Nina Borgmann, Hamburg. Kerbel has had solo exhibitions at the Moderna Musset, Stockholm, Norwich Gallery, UK. Kerbel was recently included in The British Art Show at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in London and was also featured in Art of the Garden, at Tate Britain last year. Kerbel's current projects include INSOMNIA, a play sponsored by Artangel, involving a nocturnal plant-life in a garden for insomniacs, and most recently she was featured in Artforum's January 2006 "First Takes" as an important emerging artist.

* This will be our final exhibition our current location. The Horticultural Society of New York will be relocating to 37th Street and Broadway, featuring a newly redesigned gallery space. We will resume our exhibitions in the fall of 2006 at this new location.

Pressetext

Darren Almond & Janice Kerbel
The Impossible Landscape
Co-Kuratoren: Mark Godfrey, Jodie Vicenta Jacobson