Yancey Richardson presents Elevated, Lynn Saville’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Seven photographs are on view in the project gallery from April 4 – May 18.
Twilight in the city, before the sun disappears below the horizon and the hustle and bustle has dissipated, is where Lynn Saville finds refuge and inspiration. For decades, she has documented these fleeting, dream-like moments suspended in time within the urban landscape.
Elevated showcases Saville’s mastery of the city’s natural light. Much like Edward Hopper, who painted the solitude of New York City through its buildings and rooftops, Saville’s photographs transform architectural elements and structures into dramatic geometric forms and patterns through light and shadows. Saville describes the importance of capturing images at twilight, “During this transitional time, the change from daylight to moonlight and artificial light seems to awaken the city’s own dreams, apart from the business and errands of its inhabitants. For me, these dreams are expressed in basic shapes and patterns, as if the infrastructure were communing with its own geometry while distracting details are hidden in shadow. The shifting light brings out forms that may disappear in the darkness of night or remain invisible during the more chaotic visual world of daylight.”
As the exhibition title implies, photographs featured in the show are either taken from, on, or under the elevated platforms of New York City’s mass transit system, exploring perspectives on the vernacular language of the built environment and our perception of the cityscape. From this vantage point, the expanse of skyline structures such as rooftops, water towers, upper sections of nearby buildings and the coming and goings of trains become the focal point.
Born in Durham, North Carolina, Lynn Saville lives and works in New York City. She earned her BA from Duke University and her MFA from Pratt Institute. Her work has been widely exhibited in the US and abroad, including at The Photographers’ Gallery, London; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina; Tucson Museum of Art; and Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University. Her work can be found in numerous major public collections including National Portrait Gallery, London; International Center of Photography, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others.
Saville has published four monographs: Acquainted with the Night (Rizzoli, 1997); Night/Shift (Monacelli/Random House, 2009), with an introduction by Arthur C. Danto; Dark City: Urban America at Night (Damiani, 2015), with an introduction by Geoff Dyer, and Lost (Kris Graves Projects, 2018). Saville’s archives were acquired by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University.
