LAURIE SIMMONS exhibits two series of large format color photographs at Metro Pictures from March 12 to April 2. The new work, ballet scenes and color interiors, further explores the artificiality of photography through the use of doll figures now seen in combination with rephotographed environments.
The ballet series depicts ballerinas placed in relationship to photographically represented ballet performances or sets. The staging employed in the photographs serves to emphasize the unreal nature of the ballet itself as well as photography's capacity to assimilate and present as an acceptable version of reality various falsifications.
The interiors are color coordinated rooms rephotographed from magazines pages with monochromatic dolls that are matched to the dominant color of the room backdrop. The large scale photographs are considerations of the extraordinary contrivance of efforts towards interior decoration. At the same time, they are studies in abstract color relationships, a factor that renders the work humorous in both the use of the banal images and the comment on conventions of art making.
Laurie Simmons was born in Long Island, New York, and lives in New York City. Her photographs have been included in such recent exhibitions as: Image Fabrique at Centre G. Pompidou, Beaubourg, Paris; The Image Scavengers, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia; Staged Photo Events at Lijnbaancentrum in Rotterdam; Figures, Forms and Expressions, at the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo; Body Language: Figurative Aspects of Recent Art, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Fort Worth Art Museum, and the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati.