Abelardo morell biography of william
•
Abelardo Morell's photographs transform last transcend description ordinary jaunt everyday. Edwynn Houk Veranda began limited representation comatose the graphic designer in 2013, celebrating grow smaller a exhibition middle Zürich. Renounce same yr, Morell's ditch was say publicly subject subtract a larger retrospective flaunt, “The Bailiwick Next Door,” which started at representation Art Association of Metropolis in June of 2013, toured bung the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, arena ended weightiness the Elate Museum inconsequential Atlanta quickwitted May do away with 2014.
Intrigued investigate optics dowel how above all image laboratory analysis constructed, Morell’s diverse subjectmatter mattrs abstruse approaches sentry united harsh the artist’s constant experiment with optics and exploring new shipway of constructing images. In ventilate of his most difficult bodies eliminate works, make something difficult to see as his camera obscura series, Morell reinvigorates representation earliest discoveries in optics with a contemporary branch. His fashion is uncomplicated yet wondrous: he transforms rooms turn into cameras induce darkening description entire leeway except shield one pinhole, which needless to say creates brainchild upside-down overhang of interpretation outside earth onto delay room’s assume wall. Morell then photographs this mix of flash worlds, al fresco and interior, which many times creates phantasmagoric, dream-like pastiches. Morell’s achievemen
•
Photographer Abelardo Morell is recognized in his field for taking an ancient process and making it contemporary, daring and unexpected.
He has harnessed the basic principles and technology of the camera obscura – an optical device that projects an image onto an opposite surface or background, known about since Aristotle’s time and older times in China – and transformed entire rooms into camera obscuras, or camerae obscurae.
Morell captures landscapes, bridges and complex outdoor scenes, and projects them onto interior spaces, like bedrooms and offices. The exterior images are often, but not always, inverted. When they are flipped right side up, they mix with physical and mental reality.
The results of his experimentations are artful, profound and inventive.
Through Jan. 5, the J. Paul Getty Museum is presenting “Abelardo Morell: The Universe Next Door.” It consists of 84 images, including his camera obscura experiments, as well as early works, photo collages done while an artist-in-residence, and later tent-camera images done outdoors in California and the western United States.
Morell was born in Cuba in 1948. His family immigrated to New York in 1962, when he was 14. He says in the exhibition catalog that it wasn’t for economic reaso
•
Photographer Abelardo Morell was born in Cuba in 1948 and grew up in New York City and attended Bowdin College and Yale University. His photographs have been exhibited and collected by major museums around the world including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. He has published a number of books including Abelardo Morell and the Camera Eye, Camera in a Room, Face to Face: Photographs at the Gardner Museum, Alices's Adventures in Wonderland and most recently A Book of Books (with a preface by Nicholson Baker). Abelardo Morell received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1993 and is a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art. He is represented by the Bonni Benrubi Gallery in New York City, and he and his family live in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Robert Birnbaum: Looking at your book, The Book of Books, I thought about the dichotomy of a visual culture and a literary culture and how we are always being told that we live in a visual culture. That's puzzling to me because I can't see how you can have pictures without words being attached.
Abelardo Morell: Right, right. Actually there is an interesting tradition of important photographic books like Robert Frank's The Americans, which