CLAMP presents “Bill Armstrong : All a Blur,” a retrospective exhibition spanning more than two decades of work by the New York–based artist. Bringing together seminal bodies of work from Arm- strong’s ongoing “Infinity” series— including “Mandalas,” “Portraits,” “Film Noir,” “Renaissance,” “Falling Through History,” and others—the show offers a comprehensive view of a practice devoted to color, perception, transcendence, and the psychological charge of the image.
Since the early 2000s, Armstrong has developed a distinctive photographic process that begins with found imagery drawn from diverse sources, including Renaissance drawings, cinematic stills, and art-historical figures. Printed reproductions are reworked with paint and collage and photographed in close range with the camera lens set at infinity—a deliberate subversion of photographic convention. The resulting images are radically out of focus, dissolving form and de-materializing the subject. Hovering between representation and abstraction, Armstrong’s photographs occupy a liminal space—at once corporeal and spectral.
Across Armstrong’s work, recurring motifs of suspension, falling, and solitude function as metaphors for spiritual inquiry and human vulnerability. The early “Mandala” photographs are non-representational images of concentric circles that refer to central themes in Buddhism such as the Wheel of Life and the Map of the Cosmos. In “Renaissance,” appropriated drawings from the 15th and 16th centuries are transformed into lush fields of color, with isolated figures dramatizing and expanding epic themes from the original source material. Other bodies of work, such as “Film Noir,” introduce lone figures drawn from cinematic narratives, suspended in moments of ethical and psychological ambiguity.
The exhibition culminates with recent photographs such as those from “Falling Through History,” a series that assembles falling figures appropriated from across Western art history, extracting them from their historical moment and connecting them in a continuous stream that transcends period, style, and subject matter. Referencing subjects as varied as Icarus, acrobats, divers, and dancers, the work collapses distinctions between terror and joy, failure and grace. Some figures appear to plunge, others to levitate, suggesting that falling itself is not the problem—but rather the uncertainty of the landing. Created on the eve of global upheaval, the series resonates with contemporary anxieties while maintaining Armstrong’s enduring interest in transcendence and the possibility of a momentary state of grace.
Bill Armstrong is an internationally acclaimed fine art photographer. His “Infinity” series has been exhibited in over 30 solo and 100 group exhibitions over the past 25 years. Mr.
Armstrong’s work was featured in “A Matter of Light: Inside the Vatican Museums,” a special project shot in the Sistine Chapel that is now a permanent installation at the foot of the stairs to the chapel in the Vatican Museums.
Bill Armstrong : All a Blur
Until February 28, 2026
CLAMP
47 West 29th Street, Ground Floor
New York, NY 10001
Tel 646 230 0020
www.clampart.com
The exhibition coincides with the publication of Bill Armstrong: All a Blur—Photographs from the Infinity Series (Axiomatic Editions, a new imprint of ORO Editions). See www.all-a-blur.com
All a Blur: Photographs from the Infinity Series by Bill Armstrong
Publisher Axiomatic Editions
Hardcover
Language English
Pages 336
ISBN 9781966515326
$80.00
https://www.rizzolibookstore.com/product/all-blur-photographs-infinity-series
Join us at Rizzoli for a conversation with Bill Armstrong to celebrate his new book, a meditation on the granular elements of personal history, spirituality, philosophy, and the medium of photography itself. He will be in conversation with Lyle Rexer, followed by a signing.
All a Blur: Photographs from the Infinity Series by Bill Armstrong
Jan 22 2026 | 5:30 – 7:30pm
Presenter/Author Bill Armstrong and Lyle Rexer
Event Location : Rizzoli
1133 Broadway
New York, NY 10010
https://www.rizzolibookstore.com/bill-armstrong-all-blur-photographs-infinity-series
