NYAB Event - Robert Moran and Robert Calafiore Exhibition

Robert Moran and Robert Calafiore Exhibition

Klompching Gallery

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Klompching Gallery brings together the photographic artworks of two artists, Robert Moran and Robert Calafiore. Each artist presents compelling photographs of artifacts, bringing to attention in fine detail, the objects’ individual attributes. More than this, they each utilize the photographic medium in different ways to preserve histories that are at once universal and highly personal. By juxtaposing the different methodologies utilized by two perceptive and highly skilled photographers, we highlight the breadth of possibilities in visualizing ideas through the photographic medium.

In the case of Robert Moran, we present the Relics series. Made between 2011–2014, the photographs that make up Relics, present artifacts from our recent past that are discarded, and for the most part, no longer used. The objects range from manual typewriters, earth globes, dial phones and lava lamps through to electric fans and pigskin footballs. Each machine or object is centrally positioned upon a shelf, photographed front-on and lit brightly. The method of depicting the objects is reminiscent of an anthropological survey, presenting the viewer with the details to scrutinize. However, the simplicity of approach also enables us to view the subject matter with a touch of nostalgia, warmth and to ignite memories of an object’s past use.

Robert Calafiore’s Glass series consists of images of seemingly ordinary glass objects. However, most of them are mid-century family heirlooms, from the artist’s immediate and extended Italian migrant family. They are imbued with narratives of migration, generational family history and for the artist, direct experiences of their utilitarian function in the family home. Individual and unique experiences have been transferred into unique objects, with each photograph being made as a one-of-a-kind print, using a pinhole camera obscura to record light directly onto the traditional photographic paper.

Whereas Robert Moran’s photographs are almost monochromatic, quiet and contemplative, with each photograph rendered at an intimate scale, Robert Calafiore’s photographs are lush in color, vibrant and energetic; boldly stated as a large-scale grid of 18 separate photographs. What they share is a wonderful celebration of the importance of objects in peoples’ lives, our projection of personal stories onto them, and in their own ways, a nod to photography’s performative role within that context. Both bodies of work are about beauty, about collective reminiscence and personal narratives.

Robert Moran lives and works off the coast of Maine. His photographs have been exhibited in numerous exhibitions across the US and internationally, including at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale (Australia), The Center for Fine Art Photography (Fort Collins, US), Griffin Museum of Photography (Winchester, US) and the Magenta Flash Forward Festival (Canada) among others. Photographs by Robert Moran are represented in the collections of Cleveland Clinic, the Magenta Foundation and the Fort Wayne Museum of Art.

Robert Calafiore lives and works in West Hartford, Connecticut. He holds a BFA in Photography from Hartford Art School and an MFA in Photography from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His work has been exhibited in several exhibitions in the US, including at the Klompching Gallery in 2014. Collections holding his work include the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the New Britain Museum of American Art.

Klompching Gallery was established 2007, and specializes in the sale and exhibition of contemporary fine art photography. The gallery represents an international roster of established artists, whose work can be found in several notable public and private collections. Located in Dumbo (Brooklyn, New York) the gallery showcases photography that demonstrates creative integrity and intent, originality, narrative and aesthetic challenges, and the highest level of craftsmanship. Klompching Gallery is a member of AIPAD since 2012, and exhibits each year at the New York Photography Show at the Park Avenue Armory. In addition to its exhibitions schedule, the gallery provides detailed, bespoke acquisition services to collectors of contemporary photographs.