Robert Mann Gallery
210 Eleventh Avenue, 212-989-7600
Chelsea
October 19 - November 25, 2006
Reception: Thursday, October 19, 6 - 8 PM
Web Site
The Argentine artist res, working with collaborator Constanza Piaggio, has produced a remarkable new series entitled Conatus. Each piece is a painstaking recreation of an iconic piece of western art by painters such as Velazquez, da Vinci, and Picasso. In the process of translating the original work from canvas to photograph, res makes unexpected alterations that reinterpret and recontextualize the subject and its themes through contemporary perspectives on spirituality, philosophy, politics, and the centuries-old process of image-making. The resulting large-scale photographs are powerful and brooding, yet strangely beautiful, like fragments of a dream that one struggles to remember.