Valdir Cruz "Raizes Bonitas"
Throckmorton Fine Art
This event has ended.
Throckmorton Fine Art is pleased to offer an exhibit of the famed photographer, Valdir Cruz. The gallery will show 20 of his oversized, black-and-white photographs of the majestic trees of his native Brazil. In an era dominated by contemporary art, often so conceptual as to be impenetrable, Cruz has unabashedly returned to one of the perennial subjects of great artists—trees, and the landscapes they populate.
Born in 1954, Cruz is now a “mature artist,” thoughtful, with a clear sense of purpose, and technically skilled. He is the beneficiary of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his work has been widely collected, including by such august institutions as the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Ironically, his embracing of a traditional subject—nature—makes him an artistic rebel.
Cruz’s large photographs of trees capture the magnitude of his subjects. They are shown to be majestic, improbable but imposing works of structure and form, bridging, as so many ancient cultures have expressed it, the two worlds of earth and sky. Trees are temples. Yet Cruz also lets us see that trees can be intimate, poetic and calming, much like pools of water. His photographs of trees surprise us, revealing much.
At a time when so many of us are separated from nature, Cruz’s photography reminds of the centrality of nature, of how it provides us with life. His photography is not just re-assuring, it is also “easy to live with.”
[Image: Valdir Cruz "Figueira-brava e pau-d' alho" (2009) Pigment on paper 38 x 30 in.]
Media
Schedule
from April 21, 2011 to June 04, 2011