Edwynn Houk Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of photographs, Lynn Davis: Africa. Opening on 12 November, the show continues through 16 January 1999.
Lynn Davis’ desire to record the natural and architectural monuments of the world drives her to undertake daunting expeditions which in the past have included Burma, Cambodia, Thailand, India, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Australia, and the Arctic north. With this newest group of pictures, viewers follow Davis as she takes giant strides across the African continent, visiting Mali, Ethiopia, Egypt, Sudan, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana, and Tanzania. Davis's prophetic images are always executed with elegance and restraint. Many are odes to the present glories of nature as well as the ancient civilizations that once populated these areas. Others celebrate present day Africa, and still others recall the painful history of the slave trade.
Davis’ minimalist approach to her subject matter has long attracted both photography and painting connoisseurs. Whether revisiting Egypt to record new subjects, the Bent Pyramid or Red Pyramid of Egypt, or encountering the little known pyramids of Meroe, in Sudan, Davis strips away all extraneous information to focus on both the massiveness of these forms and their geometric essence. In other images, such as Mosque of Djenne, Mali, Davis captures the day-to-day routines as well as the magical timelessness of the culture. This, the world’s largest mud structure, with curvilinear, attenuated shapes inspired by the female anatomy, is representative of the kinds of sensuous, exotic structures Davis seeks out and records on her journeys.
Other hallmarks of a Lynn Davis photograph are its impressive scale (many are nearly four feet by four feet) and its meticulous production. Using selenium, gold, and other rich toners to create warm and cool tones, Davis adds a subtle atmosphere. Many of her pyramids, with their warm palettes, invite the viewer into the parched desert world of sand, wind and space. However, in one of the most striking images of the show, Bent Pyramid, Dashur, Cairo, Egypt, Davis surprises us. Toned overall in slate blue, it looms, mysterious and enchanting, in the cool desert night.
In Davis’ photographs, viewers can literally and figuratively feel their way through Africa. In Great Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe, two towering, curving walls, built in the 4th century entirely of rough-hewn stone, ominously enclose viewers. In the series of images Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, Davis takes viewers to the very edge of the gorge that separates them from the falls. Enveloped by the powerful force of so many trillions of water drops and mist, viewers are confronted, as if for the first time, with the sublime, raw power of nature.
Lynn Davis' photographs have been exhibited internationally and collected widely. Her work appears in the major collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the L. A. County Museum, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. Selections of Davis’ African images will appear in Into Africa by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., to be published by Knopf in fall, 1999. Her second monograph, entitled Monument, will be released by Arena Editions also in fall, 1999.
The gallery is located between 57th and 58th streets on Fifth Avenue, and is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00 to 6:00 p.m.
