Cig Harvey’s photographs produce a special feeling of wonder, admiration, or even fear of the unknown by looking at life on the threshold between magic and disaster, for they are tiny fragments of everyday life captured in a moment of awe. You An Orchestra You A Bomb, is her new body of work currently presented at Robert Mann Gallery, in New York.
The series looks at the artist’s relationship with life itself. It continues on themes of family in Cig Harvey’s whimsical and otherworldly style, while thinking deeper about what lays ahead in a formative sensory response to how fragile the present can be. Harvey has always experienced the world viscerally, but after a traumatic event, a raw heightened awareness of the temporary nature of life permeates this new work. Through breathless moments of beauty, her images propel us to fathom the sacred in the split seconds of daily life.
In today’s culture it seems that awe inspiring moments can be overlooked and often forgotten in the fast-paced realities of the modern world. Harvey shows us it is time to seek out moments that create goosebumps and find a sign that we’re in the presence of something extraordinary, even in the everyday. Blizzard on Main Street captures a beautifully serene and calm winter wonderland menaced by the impending disturbance of blinding car lights trampling through the blanketed landscape. The vibrant colors of taxidermic Birds of New England found in a thrift store come to life in a flurry of wings and tails, while guarding the gazing eye that hides behind them. A young girl contemplating the darkness in the forest beyond as the Magnolia Tree she rests against blooms snow white flowers that threaten to fly away with a single gust of wind. Cig Harvey’s photographs are poetic moments that are part memoir, part poetry and part love letter to her family.
Cig Harvey: You An Orchestra You A Bomb
December 7, 2017 – January 27, 2018
Robert Mann Gallery
525 West 26th Street, Floor 2
New York, NY 10001
USA
