Emanuela Gardner
The New time square -
The Pornography of Global Media
October 16 - November 22, 2008
Opening reception:
Thursday, October 16, 6-9pm
Merge Gallery
205 West 20th Street
New York, NY
Hours: Tuesday through Saturday 11-6pm
Emanuela Gardner, a New York City-based photographer, turns a discerning eye toward New York's Times Square in an exhibition entitled: THE NEW TIMES SQUARE -The Pornography of Global Media - opening at Merge Gallery on October 16, 2008.
Writing of the exhibition, Ralph Engelman and Michael Pelias observed, “Gardner's representations of the familiar landmark are incredibly stunning and disturbing. Traces of the old are disappearing and the Square's namesake, The New York Times, has departed. Now, in its place are shining monuments to the giant media conglomerates of the digital age, Disney/ABC, Viacom and News Corp, and the iconography of NASDAQ, the stock market of new media, overshadowing the old Big Board.”
“Gardner, a master in the depiction of how light falls on objects, opens our eyes to a different spectacle and sensuality of monumental, glistening, modern buildings. The luscious and subversive photographs decode a new pornography of consumerism. We recognize in Gardner's large format prints the hegemony of a Disneyfied pop culture and ultimately understand that lurking behind the façade of the new Times Square is a Faustian pact that has prostituted Times Square’s authentic self to a consumer ideal.”
Emanuela Gardner made her reputation as a portrait photographer with photographs of Raoul Julia, Carl Bernstein, Jeff Koons, Leo Castelli and Walter Cronkite, to name a few. For the past five years, her work has evolved into color images. Gardner has captured the new digital order in her photographs of Times Square, and she has done so with powerful non digital, chromogenic, 30 x 40 inch prints beautifully crafted in her laboratory in Manhattan.
For further information or to arrange an interview with the artist, please contact Cass Zielinski at info@mergegallery.com or telephone 212.929.7505.
