Joe Deal "West and West: Reimaging the Great Plains"
Robert Mann Gallery
This event has ended.
Following the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and the subsequent public survey along the Sixth Principal Meridian, the Great Plains was officially opened to development and the surveyor's grid provided the basis for cataloguing the open expanse. Drawing on the remarkable history of 19th century survey photography, Joe Deal's new series of photographs, West and West, serves as a meditation on landscape and history, and their place in the realms of imagination and representation.
Robert Mann Gallery will exhibit a selection of photographs from this body of work, which continues Deal's keen observation of the forms and markers of built and natural landscapes. While West and West eschews the imagery of development for which Deal is best known, this project still connotes the impact of human-initiated processes by asking the viewer to think historically and consider what in a landscape has changed and also what has not changed. Focusing on the Great Plains also marks a return to the region where Deal grew up. West and West offered the opportunity to reconnect with what he calls "the dreamed landscape" of his childhood, now framed by the complicating knowledge of the history that shaped the land.
Media
Schedule
from March 18, 2010 to May 08, 2010