Art in Progress

Art in Progress

Leonora Hamill
10th March 2012 – 29th April 2012

curated by Gigliola Foschi

Podbielski Contemporary is pleased to present Art in Progress, the first solo exhibition in Germany by the Franco-British artist Leonora Hamill, winner of the 2012 Prix HSBC pour la Photographie. Art in Progress features a selection of images from her extensive exploration of art schools across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. The depiction of practices of artistic legacy and contemporary arts production within this significant body of work, created over the last three years, contributes to a greater understanding of the vital role contemporary art plays in an ever more global cultural dialogue. Hamill photographs empty studios in art schools marked with the richness of the activities undertaken by the students. Her images, shot with a large format camera and printed analogically, are intentionally detailed, frontal and neutral. They invite the spectator to enter the studios in these schools and observe the freshly used tools of the trade which are perceived as traces that indicate, or allow us to imagine, the artistic experimentations that take place there. These carefully constructed images have given rise to a homogeneous and democratic body of work from which emerges the similarities and contrasts, both didactic and atmospheric, of the many art schools Hamill has photographed. Her decision to enter the studios just after the students have left and to photograph with long exposures, without ever changing the spaces she encounters, has enabled her to create images characterized by a silence loaded with absent presences and a collective vitality. Her work is transformed into a sort of tracing paper that reveals the artistic tensions present within the spaces, the people who have passed through them, and the stories of past and present etched into the walls of these studios from Saigon to Santiniketan and Poznan to Tetouan. Curated by Gigliola Foschi