Reverberation: Sharon Core, Jitka Hanzlová, Ori Gersht, and Hellen Van Meene

Since ancient times, through the Renaissance and up to the present day, artists have recontextualized the ideas, images and styles of their predecessors. In our online exhibition Reverberation, the work of Sharon Core, Ori Gersht, Jitka Hanzlová and Hellen Van Meene raises questions about influence, appropriation, originality and authorship. Utilizing a variety of approaches, each artist draws upon the work of recognized painters to produce photographs that destabilize the distinction between painting and photography and blur the boundary between past and present. All four artists bring the present into contact with the past to create what Walter Benjamin described as “dialectical images”, in which the relationship of past to present is not one of linear time, but of constant negotiation.

Sharon Core's meticulously constructed still lifes are based on the early 19th century paintings of American artist Raphaelle Peale. After careful study and research into the painter's subject matter, tone, light, color and scale, Core creates live sets for the camera that seek to simulate with historic mimicry an illusion of the American past. Her elaborate process involves the collection of period commodities, porcelain and glassware, and the cultivation of pre-industrial heirloom varieties of fruits and vegetables present in the Early Republic. The composed sets are lit and photographed to blend seamlessly into Peale's oeuvre. Core uses photography's strengths as a truth telling medium to create an uncanny doubling, a mimesis that is both seductive and deceiving.  

For her series There is Something I Don’t Know, Jitka Hanzlova sought out individuals in northern Italy and Spain, whose presence was evocative of the quattrocento portraits she had encountered in museums throughout Europe. Her subjects pose in three-quarter or full profile, often lit with a subtle natural light and possessing enigmatic, contemplative expressions. The images evoke a strange sense of deja vu as the contemporary appearance of the sitters melds with their archetypal poses. Reminiscent of Renaissance masterpieces such as Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, and Piero della Francesca’s Duke and Duchess of Urbino, Hanzlova’s portraits illustrate an ineffable timelessness characteristic of much of her work. 

In his recent work, Ori Gersht uses the still life paintings of the Italian mid-20th century artist Giorgio Morandi and the 17^th century Spaniard Francisco de Zurbarán to reference the fragility and fragmentation of the European Union. For the series Evertime, Gersht commissioned masterfully crafted replicas of the vessels and bottles found in Morandi’s paintings and, after carefully arranging and lighting them in a resolved composition, he fired on the ceramics with an air rifle synchronized to a high-resolution camera. The resulting images record the shattering of the objects, revealing details beyond what the eye could perceive and juxtaposing calm stillness with violent movement. Combining art historical precedents with advanced digital technology, Gersht brings into question the seemingly opposing ideas of that which endures and that which is momentary.

Throughout her career, Hellen van Meene has made portraits of girls in various stages of adolescence in addition to formal portraits of dogs in outdoor studio settings. Drawing on Roman sculpture and the paintings of Botticelli, Velazquez and Gentileschi, van Meene’s photographs are characterized by an exquisite quality of light, formal elegance, and palpable psychological tension. Van Meene captures the intimacy in the photographer/subject relationship, bringing out a sense of vulnerability from within her models and highlighting the beauty of imperfection. In her portraits, van Meene seems to slow down time, creating images that appear both contemporary and entirely from another era.