NYAB Event - "Cross Town" Exhibition

"Cross Town" Exhibition

LUMAS New York

This event has ended.

Larry Yust, Los Angeles filmmaker and photographer, started photographically documenting his film locations early on. His "photographic elevations" capture otherwise impossible perspectives of the city: his works are composed of anywhere from ten to one hundred individual images, which are finally carefully assembled into a single view. With the sensitivity of a filmmaker, he guides the viewer’s gaze across the scene and in doing so simulates a cinematic tracking shot. The fascinating diversity of the architectural styles of Paris’s metro stations inspired Yust to make his first photographic elevations; today we can also enjoy picturesque views of Venice’s waterways and of the boulevards of Los Angeles. In his newest photographic works, Yust transports the viewer to enchanting and unique Cuba. The country’s timeworn cities radiate light, color, and joie de vivre – and arouse a sense of nostalgia. Here in his panoramas, the architectural treasures of colonialist Cuba come together with dilapidated homes to generate an atmospheric whole.

Sabine Wild’s works reveal a similarly fascinating but essentially different aesthetic. Her pieces are made up of pastose painterly gestures that focus energy into its horizontal
and vertical structures. She elegantly deconstructs not only urban architecture but also landscapes and nature. With vertical movements of the camera, she works consciously
and consistently with blurriness, which positively disrupts and unsettles our familiar view of well-known buildings and monuments. Wild takes her viewers on a journey through the world’s eminent metropolises like Berlin and New York, but those on the lookout for the cities’ typical landmarks must take a moment of pause, as these can often only be recognized upon second glance. The artist is primarily interested in structures, colors, and form. Again and again she is able to create a penetrating tension through opposing artistic techniques: dark horizontal and vertical lines are juxtaposed with glowing particles of color, and diffuse, picturesque passages enter into dialogue with graphic sections. The constant vertical format brings out the depths of cavernous streets, whose concrete
and steal forms seem the sides of imposing mountains. Simultaneously, however, Wild clearly emphasizes the horizontal lines in the foreground, creating a colorful and decisive grid pattern. The image as a whole remains out of focus; the contours blur on the surface in a play of colors.