Victor Schrager: The Space in Between

July 31 - September 18, 2010

Photography dealer Kathy McCarver Root and her gallery, KMR Arts, proudly announce the opening of a one man show of platinum photograph and color pigment photographs entitled, “Victor Schrager: The Space in Between.” The exhibition includes work from two of Schrager’s best known series: “Bird/Hand” and “Composition as Explanation”. The opening is July 31 with an artist’s reception from 3 to 6 pm and continues through September 18, 2010.

Victor Schrager’s “Composition as Explanation” photographs are radiant and abstracted still life images where luminous planes of color interact with sharp descriptive edges. In the tradition of classical still life painting, Schrager’s compositions are not content driven, but rather an increasingly pure and heroic presentation of simple subjects. The scale of the pictures and the soft focus of each image enables solid color fields to bounce off of and blend into one another, creating a palette of unexpected hues. In subtle reference to his still life influences, Schrager recently responded to the question of his subject matter with, “A book is an interesting form of a lemon.”

Bird Hand is an elegant series of black and white photographs created over a seven year period of over 100 species of living birds presented in the hands of ornithologists. Schrager’s photographs portray the human hand as a delicate pedestal for these fascinating creatures. Throughout history, birds have engaged the imagination of mankind. Their beauty and gifts of song and flight have inspired poets, artists, and scholars. Schrager’s choice of platinum printing yields images that are subtle, majestic and powerful.

Both series share a navigation of intimate spaces - Bird/Hand explores that space where the animal and human, natural and cultural, sculpture and pedestal interact; in Composition as Explanation Schrager creates emotionally charged chambers of space filled with pure color, shadows, or their absence.

A Harvard graduate, Victor Schrager (b. 1950) is a recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Guggenheim Foundation, and The MacDowell Colony Resident Fellowship. His work has been featured in numerous one person and group exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and Asia over the past twenty years. His photographs are in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Center for Creative Photography, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Maison Europeenne de la Photographie, Paris, The International Center of Photography, The San Francisco Museum of Art, and numerous private collections.