Circumambulation
26 December, 2014 – 6 February, 2015
Baldwin Gallery is proud to present our fourth show of new works by acclaimed contemporary artist and photographer Adam Fuss. In this body of work, Fuss has produced large-scale daguerreotype (the largest daguerreotypes ever made; a considerable feat of engineering) portraits of individual ‘figures’ in the Taj Mahal’s dado rail of flowers (notably lily, rose, tulip and poppy). Every photographer’s work is ultimately about time, and time is always, always about death. Fuss has chosen as a setting an overwhelmingly beautiful, infinitely recognizable, wonder of the world, but ultimately also a woman’s tomb. The Taj Mahal is a symbol so clear it’s almost a character: a secular temple to love everlasting, and in this work Fuss reflects upon the haunting humanity of love and heartbreak, and the exquisite rarity of forever.
But combined with the intimate readings of yearning and loss, is the macro-story of tectonic historic forces and transformative times. To art historian Ananda Coomaraswamy the Taj Mahal is, in its form, an architectural monument to the unifying power and strength of empire: an authentically ‘Indian’ structure, with its dome, arches and four corners, in a cosmopolitan multicultural mish-mash of Moghul rule. And Mohandas Gandhi deemed it ‘the embodiment of forced labor, and nothing more’. For more than love, the Taj Mahal is a monument to power. The ultimate patron can call from the entire known world an army of artists, such as produce and define civilizations. ‘Ars longa and vita brevis’, but the very whims of an emperor longest of all. Additionally, the British-born Fuss references the world as we have found it, and the times that brought us here: employing a Victorian-era technology at or about empire in what was once itself empire of Victoria.
Born in London in 1961, Adam Fuss is based in New York and has exhibited extensively throughout the world. His work is held in many public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum, and other museums worldwide. He has been the subject of solo museum exhibitions at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, the Fotomuseum in Winterthur and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Baldwin Gallery 209 South Galena Street, Aspen CO 81611 Tel 970.920.9797
http://www.baldwingallery.com
