Matthew Spiegelman “Transmitter”

Cleopatra's

This event has ended.

Cleopatra’s presents Transmitter, a solo exhibition of new photographs by New York based artist Matthew Spiegelman. This will be the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York. Spiegelman’s project takes its name from the site at which the photographs were made, Transmitter Park, located just a few blocks from Cleopatra’s in Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Within Transmitter, Spiegelman’s focus is attuned to the duality of social-reciprocity and self-reflexivity on display in the park. His photographs place the viewer at a vantage point that toes-the-line of spectator vs. participant. We see two people deep in conversation, a moment where one person appears to listen intently to the other. Elsewhere, two people sit side-by-side but their body language indicates a grand distance between them. In other images, singular figures bask in the color of the sun setting behind the city, their minds seemingly elsewhere. Spiegelman’s photographs are an attempt to capture the various powers at work - social, internal, atmospheric, metaphysical- transmitting in the silence of each afternoon. In Transmitter - April 30, 2016, 6:33:07pm, a woman in a red jacket sits tucked within the rocks, a section of her long blond hair swept up by a gust of wind looks guided by an invisible thread.

In this show, six photographs are installed in the gallery. Each is displayed on it’s own shelf; raising them to eye level without a frame. The photographs are printed using a dye-sublimation process, which bakes the image into the surface of a thin sheet of aluminum, creating an extremely durable print, affixing the image of these fleeting moments as a more permanent object. The shelves, made from an equally thin sheet of stainless steel, mimic the material of the print, and offer each up to the gallery space, inviting the viewer into the image.

Matthew Spiegelman was born in Miami Beach, Florida, and raised in Santa Monica, California. He attended Bard College and he has exhibited at Hannah Hoffman, LA; M+B Gallery, LA; Marc Foxx, LA; Sister, LA; David Zwirner, NY; Andrew Kreps, NY; Untitled, NY. He is Adjunct Professor of Photography at Parsons The New School for Design since 2010 and a two-time Distinguished University Teaching Award Nominee. He is Visiting Artist at Pratt Institute and Visiting Artist at Sarah Lawrence College, New York. He has published four books of his own works. In his spare time he collects spoons, textiles, knitwear, posters, packets of sugar, espresso machines, and glass.