Man Ray
Dust Breeding
1920
gelatin silver print
23.9 cm x 30.4 cm
SOCAN 2019
Eva Stenram
Per Pulverem Ad Astra (detail)
2007
unique chromogenic prints
Courtesy of the artist
Jeff Mermelstein
Statue (‘Double Check’ by Seward Johnson), New York, 11 September 2001
2001
C-print
Private Collection
a Handful of Dust
Gallery hours
Tu–Su: 10 am–5 PM; M: closed
Admission by donation
a Handful of Dust offers a rare opportunity to view a remarkable diversity of photographs from the last hundred years, focusing on the theme of dust: from aerial reconnaissance and forensics to conceptual art and abstraction. More than thirty artists and photographers are featured, including Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Louise Albin-Guillot, Walker Evans, Scott McFarland, Gerhard Richter, Mona Kuhn, Sophie Ristelhueber, Eva Sternram, Jeff Wall, and Nick Waplington.
Click to download David Campany’s curatorial essay on the exhibition (PDF).
Curator David Campany begins with an iconic photograph by influential artist Man Ray that depicts a sheet of glass belonging to Marcel Duchamp covered in dust. It is humble yet enigmatic. It is a document and an artwork, one that is realist and abstract, a still life and a landscape, and perhaps even a performance. The exhibition asks: What if dust is a key to the past century? Why do we dislike it? There is something universal about dust: we come from it, go to it, and create it daily. Inevitable and unruly, dust is the enemy of the modern order, its repressed other, its nemesis. But it has a story to tell from the other side.
