Lucinda DEVLIN
Pleasure Ground

April - May 11, 2002

 

Following its presentation of ‘The Omega Suites’ by American photographer Lucinda Devlin, which inaugurated the gallery in September 2000 and went on to win international acclaim at last year’s Venice Biennial, Paul Rodgers/9W is pleased to announce an exhibition of images from the artist’s ‘Pleasure Ground’ series. 

‘Pleasure Ground’ broadens and enlarges our understanding of Devlin’s photography and reveals her as a mature artist of compelling interest. It was in ‘Pleasure Ground’, begun in the late 1970’s and continued to the present, that the artist laid out the specifically American subject matter of her work and developed her unique point of view on contemporary architectural photography, which compares and contrasts in such interesting fashion with her international peers in the genre.

‘Pleasure Ground’ consists of interiors drawn from the American leisure industry, from indoor sports facilities, tanning salons, the sex trade, fantasy motels and nightclubs.  With the earliest dating from 1977, they already bear historic witness to the social and aesthetic conceptions of an earlier day and generation.  This may partly explain how they distinguish themselves from the more explicit and sensationalistic treatment of these themes in so much current photography.  However, this anti-sensationalistic and anti-spectacular aesthetic is the hallmark of Devlin’s work. What Devlin is really intent on doing is setting up a distance between the image and the viewer in order to allow a reflective dimension to enter our minds.  As always with Devlin, the human subject is absent from these photographs and yet its pregnant presence is felt everywhere. These images land their punch as we realize that Devlin’s true subject is the limits of a society’s imagination, namely our own.

The exhibition will present 22 images of ‘Pleasure Ground’.  The photographs are chromogenic color prints and will be available in 19 1/2 inch by 19 1/2 inch format, with selected images available in a 29 1/2 inch by 29 1/2 inch format.

Lucinda Devlin’s ‘Omega Suites’ are currently being exhibited in numerous international museum exhibitions and most recently closed at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona.  Her ‘Pleasure Ground’ will first be presented to the international artworld at this year’s São Paulo Biennial, opening this month of March.

For more information, please contact the gallery by phone at 212 414 9810 or by email at info@paulrodgers9w.com