Ken Schles: Invisible City/Nightwalk
Howard Greenberg Gallery presents a gritty and penetrating exhibition by Ken Schles on New York’s Lower East side in the 1980s. Within the Howard Greenberg space 40 rough and piercing, black and white portrayals of the East side, as Schles saw and experienced it, will be on show.
In 1983, Ken Schles moved to the East Village into a dirty building, housing drug addicts and dealers. In this setting of tumultuous life and gripping scenes right outside his doors Schles found great material and inspiration for his work.
Schles was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1960. He studied photography at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art under the legendary Lisette Model and William Gedney. With more than 25 years of producing photographic books his works are presented in the collections of or than 100 museum and library collections worldwide including: the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, DC.
Recently Schles published a new Steidl monograph, Night Walk (2014) to succeed his underground cult classic, Invisible City (1988), considered to be among the greatest depictions of nocturnal bohemian experience of the 20th century.
The exhibition at Howard Greenberg Gallery includes images from both monographs, depicting a provocative narrative of lost youth and a private view of an irretrievable downtown New York. Among the most celebrated images in the show are Drowned in Sorrow (1984) and Limelight (1983). The first pictures an untidily glamorous woman in a short dress, torn stockings and heels, lying across a couch while talking on a corded telephone. The latter captures the nightlife of Schles’ time through a woman in white sitting on a ledge, with a drink in her hand, alone, while three club denizens in the forefront chat and laugh.
The exhibition will be on view at Howard Greenberg Gallery from Thursday 29 January – Saturday 14 March 2015. An opening reception with the artist will be held on Thursday 29 January from 6-8pm.
www.kenschles.com
www.howardgreenberg.com
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