Jack Shainman Gallery is pleased to present Counterpoint, Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison’s inaugural exhibition at the gallery and their first, and therefore highly anticipated, exhibition in New York since the unveiling of their acclaimed body of work and monograph, The Architect’s Brother. Counterpoint features new photographic works with a painterly edge and sculpture that is both startlingly beautiful and haunting.

Abandoning the tightly closed narrative format of their earlier photographic works, the ParkeHarrisons continue to pursue, with the same absorbing psychological and sensory effect, the ever-bleakening relationship linking humans, technology, and nature. This time the works feature an ambiguous narrative that offers equally compelling insight into the dilemma posed by science and technology’s failed promise to fix our problems, provide explanations, and furnish certainty pertaining to the human condition. Strange scenes of hybridizing forces, swarming elements, and bleeding overabundance portray Nature unleashed by technology and the human hand and uncontrollable.

Rich colors and surrealistic imagery merge to reveal the poetic roots of the works on display. The use of color is intentional but abstract; proportion and space are compositional rather than natural; movement is blurred; objects and people juxtaposed as if by chance in a visual improvisation that unfolds choreographically. At once formally arresting and immeasurably loaded with sensations-the ParkeHarrisons’ new body of work has a powerful impact both visually and viscerally.

Counterpoint, a new full-color book published by Twin Palms Publishers, is available.

Robert ParkeHarrison studied photography at the Kansas City Art Institute and the University of New Mexico. Shana ParkeHarrison earned her degree in painting from William Woods College, going on to study dance history and metalsmithing at the University of New Mexico. In 1999 Robert ParkeHarrison was the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. The ParkeHarrisons’ collaboration has developed over the past sixteen years and in 2000 they publicly acknowledged co-authorship of their images. The Architect’s Brother, a museum exhibition of 45 images, toured throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. The ParkeHarrisons have exhibited their work in numerous group exhibitions, including the following current exhibitions, the Missing Peace: Artists Consider the Dalai Lama; Imaging a Shattered Earth: Contemporary Photography and the Environmental Debate; and Envisioning Change, an exhibition mounted in conjunction with the United Nations Environment Programs World Environment Day. Their work is in numerous private and public collections including Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art; Museum of Fine Arts Houston; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Art Institute of Chicago; and the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House. In 2008, they received the Nancy Graves Foundation Grant. Restoration: Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, a solo exhibition, is concurrently on view at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art In Kansas City, MO, through February 8, 2009.