Ori Gersht: Lost in Time

Ori Gersht
Lost in Time
On view through September 4, 2011

1130 State Street, Santa Barbara, CA.
Open Tuesday–Sunday 11 am to 5 pm.
805.963.4364
www.sbma.net

Ori Gersht’s films and photographs merge the past with what the artist has called the “ultimate present.” His work explores the complex and ever-evolving relationships between beauty and violence, order and chaos, and painting, photography (print and digital), and film, as well as the unique and shifting ability of each medium to represent the natural world. The desire to render the ‘truth’ of life and its destruction is at the core of Gersht’s practice, enhanced by the use of high-speed digital cameras that enable him to capture moments suspended in time previously imperceptible to the human eye.

Ori Gersht: Lost in Time brings together for the first time Gersht’s trilogy of films—Pomegranate (2006), Big Bang II (2007), and Falling Bird (2008)—and related photographic works based on 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century European still-life painting. Inspired by paintings by Juan Sánchez Cotán, Henri Fantin-Latour, and Jean-Siméon Chardin, these works depict of sublime scenes that become precipitously unsettling through both sudden and gradual obliteration.

Also featured is Gersht’s most recent photographic series, Chasing Good Fortune (2010), which focuses on the cultural significance and symbolic resonance of the cherry blossom in Japan. Produced from images captured at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Hiroshima, and ancient sites in western Japan, these works evoke his past engagement with landscape, but speak affectively to the present. Like his explosive still lifes, these works contemplate the ephemeral nature of life but suggest a sense of tranquil renewal.

Catalogue:
Ori Gersht: Lost in Time is accompanied by a 64-page, color-illustrated exhibition catalogue with essays by exhibition curator and SBMA Curator of Contemporary Art, Julie Joyce; Carol Armstrong, Professor, History of Art, Yale University; and London-based writer Michele Robecchi.

Related Programming:
Sunday, July 10, 2:30 pm
Still Life as Life Stilled: Ori Gersht and the Tradition of Vanitas
Eik Kahng, SBMA Chief Curator

Support:
This exhibition is made possible by the generosity of The Luria Foundation.