Friday, November 6, 5-8pm

 

(New York, NY, October 15, 2009) This fall, beginning on November 5, New York City Opera will be showcasing the work of photographers Elinor Carucci, Christopher Morris and Rachel Papo, whose work will amplify the images representing the company’s productions of the 2009-10 season. The exhibition, Parallel Perceptions, will occupy all four rings of the newly renovated David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center and will be displayed from November 5-22, 2009. In addition to showcasing the work of these three photographers, the additional photographs illustrating the New York City Opera 2009-10 season will also be on show, including images by Nikki Lee and Ryan McGinley. The exhibition is curated by Naomi Ben-Shahar.

On Friday, November 6, from 5-8pm, there will be a special free event at the David H. Koch Theater that will be open to the general public for one night only, with photographers Rachel Papo, Christopher Morris, and Elinor Carucci in attendance. The artwork can also be viewed by ticketholders at all New York City Opera performances throughout the fall season.

During New York City Opera’s 2009-10 season, the company will also celebrate its return to the newly renovated David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center with a second visual arts offering, and of a site-specific installation by artist E.V. Day in the theater’s Promenade. A series of dynamic sculptures made from a selection of vintage City Opera costumes and costume accessories will be dramatically suspended overhead in exuberant simulated motion. On view beginning November 5 (the night of American Voices, the company’s opening gala), the installation will remain in place throughout City Opera’s fall and spring seasons. On Friday, November 6, from 5 to 8pm, in conjunction with the company’s exhibition of contemporary photography, the E.V. Day installation will be open to the public, free of charge.

“The visual arts are an intrinsic part of City Opera’s mission, whether as costume design, set and lighting design or graphics,” stated George Steel, General Manager and Artistic Director of New York City Opera. “As we begin our new season, we are proud to encourage and support artists not only on the stage but in the studio.”

Preparing for First Hand Grenade Throwing, 2005.
Drawing from her experience as a teenager serving in the Israeli Air Force, Rachel Papo depicts the subject’s negotiation of the often contradictory roles of soldier and adolescent girl. The image echoes the struggle of Esther, who was also a teenager at the time she was called to risk her life to save her people from annihilation.

Devotion, 2004.
A veteran war correspondent, Christopher Morris has documented more than 18 foreign conflicts, including the wars in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Yugoslavia. In the past five years he has focused on domestic political campaigns. The image depicts a sense of privilege and entitlement shared by Don Giovanni our conscienceless antihero.

Running Fireworks, 2007. Ryan McGinley’s work explores the tropes of vernacular photography as well as constructs of
innocence, sexuality and celebrity. This image was photographed on a classic American road trip and depicts prototypical youthful indifference and folly. The image lends itself to L’Étoile, as it simultaneously suggests lighthearted revelry and the mists of fortune.

Part #21, 2003.
Nikki Lee’s self-portraits investigate gender and ethnic identity as they are affected or changed through social contexts, cultural categories or personal relationships. In her series Parts, she appears in hypothetical relationships with unidentifiable, interchangeable partners, evoking the role-playing inherent in romantic love and its potential disillusionment. The image captures Butterfly’s impending sense of loss, and portends the looming tragedy.

Mother Drives Me in the Rain, 2000.
Elinor Carucci engages her own relatives in the examination of familial drama. Her image is characterized by its cinemagraphic and voyeuristic gaze, engaging themes of identity, aging, and intimacy with startling humor and sincerity. The photograph suggests that the driver, like the title character of Partenope, is an elegant, powerful woman, the master of her own domain.

About the Artists
Rachel Papo was born in Columbus, Ohio, and raised in Israel. She began photographing as a teenager and attended a renowned fine arts high school in Haifa, Israel. At age eighteen, she served as a photographer in the Israeli Air Force. She earned a BFA in fine art from Ohio State University (1996), and an MFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York City (2005). Rachel's photographs are included in several public and private collections, including: the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Griffin Museum of Photography, Boston. Her images have been exhibited and published widely. Exhibitions include ClampArt Gallery, New York; Paul Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles; Photographic Center Northwest, Seattle; 92nd Street Y; and Hebrew Union College Museum, New York. Her photos have been published in magazines worldwide, including in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Israel, France, Spain and China. Rachel has been awarded a 2006 NYFA Fellowship, was selected as a finalist for the 2006 Santa Fe Prize for Photography, and received the 2006 Ronnie Heyman Prize for an Emerging Jewish Visual Artist. Rachel's first book, Serial No. 3817131, was published by powerHouse Books in 2008. She is represented by ClampArt Gallery in New York City where a solo exhibition opened in February 2009.

Christopher Morris was born in California in 1958. Over the past 20 years he has concentrated the greater part of his work on war, having documented more than 18 foreign conflicts, including the U.S. invasion of Panama, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Persian Gulf War, the drug war in Columbia and the wars in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Somalia and Yugoslavia. In the last five years he has documented the Presidency of George W. Bush for Time magazine. Morris has received a multitude of awards for his work, including the Robert Capa Gold Medal and Olivier Rebbot awards from the Overseas Press Club; the Magazine Photographer of the Year award from the University of Missouri School of Journalism; the Infinity Photojournalist award from the International Center of Photography, New York; the Visa d'Or award; and numerous World Press Photo Awards. Morris is a founding member of the photojournalist agency VII, and is based in New York.

Ryan McGinley, the youngest of 8 children, is an American photographer whom currently lives and works in New York. In 2003, at the age of 24, McGinley was the youngest artist to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He was also named Photographer of the Year in 2003 by American Photo Magazine. Since 2004, Ryan McGinley's style has evolved from documenting his friends in various real-life situations towards creating fantastical settings where the situations he envisions can be documented. For McGinley, it is important that variables remain in the photographic equation where the unexpected can occur. McGinley shoots 35mm film and makes his photographs using an arsenal of Yashica T4s and Leica R8s. In 2007 McGinley was awarded the Young Photographer Infinity Award by the International Center of Photography. He has had solo shows at MoMA P.S.1 in New York (2004) and in Spain at the MUSAC in Leon (2005). His work is featured in public collections in the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Ryan McGinley is represented by Jose Freire at Team Gallery in NYC, Christopher Perez at Ratio 3 Gallery in San Francisco, and Alison Jaques in London, and is managed commercially by Shea Spencer at AFG.

Nikki Lee, born in South Korea, investigates notions of identity through the media of photography and film. Lee has said, “I am interested in identity as it is affected or changed through social contexts, cultural categories or personal relationships”. She has exhibited at major institutions throughout the United States and abroad, including solo exhibitions at GAK, Bremen, Germany; the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; and Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. Her works are in the collections of major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Hammer Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Elinor Carucci was born in Israel in 1971 and lives and works in NYC. An internationally exhibited photographer, she has had solo shows at the Herzlia Museum for Contemporary Art, Edwynn Houk Gallery, Fifty One Fine Art Gallery and Gagosian Gallery, London, among others. Her photographs are included in collections in the U.S. (the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Brooklyn Museum of Arts, ICP, the Jewish Museum, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, etc.), Europe and Israel. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, including an eight-page portfolio of her work published on May 22. 2005. Her work has also been published in the New Yorker, Details, New York Magazine, W, Aperture, ARTnews and other publications. She is a recipient of numerous awards, including the ICP Infinity Award (2001), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2002), and is author of Closer, Chronicle Books 2002 and Diary of a dancer, SteidlMack 2005. Carucci is currently teaching at the School of Visual Arts and is represented by Edwynn Houk gallery and Sepia Gallery, New York.