Gestures in Space and Light features the works of seven prominent American photographers selected from the Krannert Art Museum's extensive photographic collection. Among the artists represented—Aaron Siskind (1903-1992), Brett Weston (1911-1993), Harry Callahan (1912-1999), Nathan Lerner (1913-1997), Joseph Jachna (b. 1935), Alan Cohen (b. 1943) and Michael Johnson (b. 1945), all but Michael Johnson and Brett Weston (son of the renowned photographer Edward Weston) trained or taught at The New Bauhaus School of Design (known later as the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology) founded by László Moholy–Nagy in Chicago in 1937. Together, their photographs epitomize the spirit of experimentation—of exploring the kinetic, sensorial, temporal as well as visual properties of objects, which was the school's pedagogic legacy.
The exhibition takes its cue from the creative tension that inheres in the photographic process—though a medium that holds time in place, its images, nevertheless, elude capture—motions continue, light brightens or fades, and memories are born. As studies in light, form and pattern, the photographs on display blur the boundaries between the natural and built environments, between representation and abstraction, and between the concrete and the conceptual. In so doing, they extend beyond the gallery, and open us up to new ways of seeing.
Curator: Allyson Purpura
