Mikael Levin “Subaqueous”

Mikael Levin “Subaqueous”

L. Parker Stephenson Photographs

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L. Parker Stephenson Photographs presents Franco-American artist Mikael Levin’s first exhibition at the Gallery. His Subaqueous series is presented in the main gallery alongside a selection from his series Critical Places: Sites of American Slave Rebellion in the adjacent room. Both projects, each in their own way, capture conceptions of place and temporarily.

The Gowanus Canal a cut Brooklyn New York’s urban space, dates back to the heyday of industrialization. In 2010, when Mikael Levin (b. 1954) moved to the Gowanus neighborhood, the canal had just been designated a Superfund site. Exploring the waterway by canoe, he was confounded by what was built (but decaying) and what was nature (and resurging). Over the next decade, the canal and its surroundings became the locus of several series of photographs and videos. His 90-minute video Gowanus Broadside is currently on view at the inaugural exhibition of Powerhouse Arts, overlooking the canal itself.

The photographs from Subaqueous frame a square of canal water flowing over an indeterminate bottom. Rendered in subtly varied tones of grey on a mat gelatin silver paper, these images explore surface and depth, light and opaqueness, constructed and natural, tension and flow. Encapsulating the limitlessness to what can be perceived, these images give fact to the invisible layers of time and place.

After exhibiting one location from Levin’s project Critical Places: Sites of American Slave Rebellion at this year’s AIPAD Photography Show, a selection from the thirteen other revolts that he covered is exhibited here in the second room. These photographs explore how rebellions are remembered (or not remembered) in the landscape, and what significance those rebellions still hold today. The presentation overlaps with a three-person exhibition, Toward a Self-Made Shore: Black Histories in Southern Maryland at the Boyden Gallery of St Mary’s College of Maryland.

Mikael Levin has been exhibited widely in the US and in Europe, including solo exhibitions at the Jewish Museum, Paris (2010) the Berardo Museum, Lisbon (2009) the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (2003) the International Center of Photography, New York (1997) and Fundación Mendoza, Caracas (1980). His work was included in the Venice Biennale in 2003 and is found in major collections such as those of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Metropolitan Museum, New York, the Jüdisches Museum, Berlin, the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, and Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Levin’s two most recent books are available for purchase at the gallery or on the website store. Levin’s two most recent books, Au bord and Cristina’s History are available for purchase at the gallery or on the website store.

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