NYAB Event - Sandra Elkind "New Works"

Sandra Elkind "New Works"

571 Projects

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571 Projects presents Sandra Elkind: Flat Pennies & Other Tales, an exhibition of new works. This is Elkind's first New York solo show, and her first with the gallery. In this newest body of work the artist explores narratives of recalled personal memories through the construction and photographic documenting of miniature dioramas.

Memory is a moving terrain, a strange link between our past and present. Yet it does not fully belong to one or the other. In her newest body of work, Elkind sets out to capture elusive moments of recalled memories, building intricate miniature spaces, simulacra that evoke the particular feelings of a time and space that she seeks to anchor. Using shallow depth of field, her compelling photographs play with the contrast between small areas of sharp focus and a painterly blurring of the other compositional elements. Mystery plays an important part in these dreamlike images. Each is clearly part of a narrative, accompanied by a short anecdotal paragraph, and is excerpted from a larger whole relying on the viewer to complete the story. Elkind's carefully constructed miniature sets are a clear fabrication, a constructed 'reality' that stands in or 'signifies' the reality of the memory. The act of photographing these symbolic spaces recalls the family snapshot and the role that the camera plays in holding memories. In fact, each set incorporates a photograph of an actual time and space (a sunset or a green landscape for example) that is woven into the fabric of the new image. The act of appropriating the images in new contexts underlines the slippage that so often occurs with our memories; we change details within them consciously or unconsciously, overlaying the original experience with our constructs. Documented through large c-prints, Elkind plays with scale, from the miniature to the magnified. Evocative, compelling and mysterious, the works in Flat Pennies & Other Tales engage the viewer and communicate half-hidden narratives.

Elkind completed her MFA at Parsons – The New School for Design in 2010.