Sara VanDerBeek

Sara VanDerBeek
Born Baltimore, Maryland
Nationality American
Education Cooper Union
Known for Photography

Sara VanDerBeek (born 1976),[1] is an American photography artist who lives and works in New York City. She is known for photographing sculptures and three-dimensional still-life assemblages of her own making,[2] some of which she destroys after the photos have been taken, as well as for creating images of classical figures and architectural details and their relationship to space.

Early life and education

VanDerBeek grew up in Baltimore. Her father, Stan VanDerBeek, was an experimental filmmaker. She moved to New York in 1994 to attend her father's alma mater, Cooper Union. After graduating, she worked in commercial photography in London for three years. She returned to New York in 2001 and in 2003 she opened Guild & Greyshkul, an art gallery, in Soho with her brother, Johannes VanDerBeek, a sculptor, and artist Anya Kielar, another Cooper graduate.[3] The gallery closed in 2009.[4]

Work

VanDerBeek is considered one of several contemporary photographers — among them Michele Abeles, Liz Deschenes and Eileen Quinlan — who are extending the innovations of the earlier Pictures Generation into new territory.[5] Her work focuses on photographs of assemblages that she creates in her studio. Her work was included in "New Photography 2009" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.[6] Curator Eva Respini, who put together the MoMA show, described VanDerBeek's art as having a hybrid nature: "Although Sara is a photographer, I like to think of her practice as multidisciplinary... [She is] very interested in the space of sculpture, the space of theater."[3]

Her first solo museum show, "To Think of Time" at the Whitney in 2010, contained photographs of still lifes with objects including funerary masks and architectural details.[3] VanDerBeek also uses imagery of classical figures in her work.[7] She told Aperture's Brian Sholis in 2013, "I have always been interested in how photography affects the reading of scale, time, and place. It can be disorienting or confusing to encounter a photograph of something, but it can also usefully enlighten some little-perceived aspect of real-life experience."[8] She is represented by Metro Pictures.[9]

Collections

VanDerBeek's work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art,[10] the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles,[11] the Brooklyn Museum,[12] and the Cornell Fine Arts Museum in Winter Park, FL.[13]

References

  1. ↑ "Sara VanDerBeek - Artist's Profile". The Saatchi Gallery. Retrieved 2014-02-05.
  2. ↑ Carol Kino (September 14, 2010), Putting Memories to New Use New York Times.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/arts/design/19kino.html?_r=0
  4. ↑ Smith, Roberta (February 6, 2009). "A Gallery Goes Out in a Burst of Energy". The New York Times. Retrieved 2014-02-05.
  5. ↑ Roberta Smith (May 16, 2013), Art in Review; Michele Abeles: ‘English for Secretaries’ New York Times.
  6. ↑ "New Photography 2009". MoMA. Retrieved 2014-02-05.
  7. ↑ Roffino, Sara. "25 Questions for Photographic Assemblage Interpreter Sara VanDerBeek". Blouin Artinfo. Retrieved 2014-02-05.
  8. ↑ "Interview with Sara VanDerBeek". Aperture Foundation NY. 2013-05-06. Retrieved 2014-02-05.
  9. ↑ "Sara VanDerBeek - Artists". Metro Pictures. 2013-06-08. Retrieved 2014-02-05.
  10. ↑ "Sara VanDerBeek". Whitney Museum of American Art. Retrieved 2014-02-05.
  11. ↑ "Sara VanDerBeek". MOCA. Retrieved 2014-02-05.
  12. ↑ "Sara VanDerBeek". Brooklyn Museum. Retrieved 2014-02-05.
  13. ↑ "The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art at Rollins College". http://www.rollins.edu/cornell-fine-arts-museum/collection/alfond-collection.html''.