University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
2626 Bancroft Way
Berkeley, CA 94720
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Wednesday and Friday to Sunday, 11 to 5; Thursday 11 to 7.
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http://bampfa.berkeley.edu
The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) presents Abbas Kiarostami: Image Maker, an exhibition of photographs by one of the world’s most critically acclaimed film directors. The exhibition features four series of photographs, including two series never previously exhibited on the West Coast, and accompanies a major retrospective of Kiarostami’s films at the Pacific Film Archive, running July 7 through August 30, 2007. Together, the exhibition and film series provide an unusually rich and comprehensive presentation of Kiarostami’s work. Abbas Kiarostami: Image Maker will be on view at the Berkeley Art Museum from July 8 through September 23, 2007.
Concurrent with his international acclaim as a filmmaker, Kiarostami has pursued a passion for photography since the 1980s, at the time of the Iranian revolution. He regards photography as a more pure medium than film, since it is relieved of the burden of narrative or entertainment, and in each photograph he sets out to distill the image to its barest essence.
Abbas Kiarostami: Image Maker features works from two new series, Rain and Trees and Crows (both 2006), which have never before been seen on the West Coast; and Roads and Trees and Snow White (both 1978 – 2003).
The seven color prints in the series Rain were taken by the artist through the windshield of his car, with everything but the raindrops on his windshield in focus. Kiarostami has described his car as his “best friend,” for its function as his office, a comfortable space, and a location for contemplation.
The photographs in Trees and Crows, also in color, feature serene, linear compositions of trees in various settings interrupted by the appearance of a bird or birds. Trees are a persistent theme in all of Kiarostami’s work, be they stately and majestic or precarious survivors in an inhospitable environment. For the artist they symbolize endurance and adaptability.
The nineteen black-and-white photographs in the series Roads and Trees and Snow White are mostly landscape shots for which the artist has already received widespread acclaim. In Roads and Trees, roads traverse barren, mostly unpeopled landscapes. Snow White explores the single motif of trees silhouetted starkly against blank white snow in images that are both stark and sublime.
Also included in the exhibition is the video installation Summer Afternoon (2006), an interior scene that depicts shadows dancing against a curtained window.
PFA Film Series
The Pacific Film Archive’s retrospective of Kiarostami’s films features sixteen features and a wide selection of short films spanning his remarkable and influential career. Starting with the barest of scripts, and improvising specifics with his nonprofessional casts, Kiarostami crafts fictions that are barely removed from real life, works of deceptive simplicity and indefinable poetry that philosophize on how we film reality, view reality, and most of all, how we understand reality.
Credit Line
Abbas Kiarostami: Image Maker is co-presented by The Museum of Modern Art and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, in collaboration with the Iranian Art Foundation.
The film series Abbas Kiarostami: Image Maker was curated by Jytte Jensen, curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The series was originally co-organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, in collaboration with the Iranian Art Foundation.
University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
2626 Bancroft Way, Berkeley CA 94720
http://bampfa.berkeley.edu
Press contact
Rod Macneil [email protected]
Image:
Abbas Kiarostami: Roads and Trees, 2006; 6 black-and-white photographs; each: 28-1/2 x 41-1/4 in.; collection of the Iranian Art Foundation, New York.
