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An important
aspect of Miss's work is her photo/drawings: collages in which several
photographic views of a single structure or site are spliced together
to form an altered whole. Throughout her domestic travels, Miss has always
photographed unusual sites and temporary structures in the American landscape
including canals, mine-heads, fences, and towers. Many of these pictures
inform a significant part of her public sculpture projects. It was in
1990, after an artist-residency at Harvard University's Graduate School
of Design, that Miss began layering her photographs, creating collages
whose outer edges formed irregular contours. As their emphasis on light
and abstract pattern attests, the photo/drawing conveys the experience
of a particular space rather than strict documentation. The re-invention
of existing structures and the observation of a site from different perspectives
link the photo/drawings with the concerns of her three-dimensional projects.
They also provide an emotional reference and memory of place that resonates
in her large outdoor works.
Although
correspondences exist between Miss's photo/drawings and the photographs
of Gordon Matta-Clark, Jan Dibbets, and Robert Smithson, each artist approaches
landscape differently. For Miss, the photo/drawings illustrate an overriding
theme that exists in all of her sitework: the conjunction between the
built and the natural landscape.
In 2004 a
fully-illustrated monograph on Mary Miss was published by Princeton Architectural
Press with essays by Daniel Abramson, Joseph Giovannini, and Eleanor Heartney.
Current projects include a permanent tree-topped walkway for the Indianapolis
Museum of Art, a layered pond for the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh,
and a master plan for a 1,000 acre public park in Irvine, California,
in collaboration with landscape architect Ken Smith and architect Enrique
Norten.
Gallery hours
are Tuesday through Friday, 10am to 6pm, and Saturday, 11am to 6pm. For
further information please contact Laurence Shopmaker or Betsy Senior
at 212.213.6767.
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