Between Observation and Intervention: The Painted Photographs of Melvin Charney

Between Observation and Intervention: The Painted Photographs of Melvin Charney
May 1 - July 31, 2008
Guest Curator: Gwendolyn Owens

Exhibition catalogue available.

Over the last thirty years, Canadian artist Melvin Charney has produced a demanding and rhetorically complex body of work which lies on the cutting edge between art and architecture. His site-related installations, drawings, photographs and montages have raised questions and stimulated discussion on the nature of the city and the connections between people, the meaning of site and location. Among his most striking works are his large-scale painted photographs, in which stylized representations of buildings and building types are overlaid on mass media images. These works were the focus of the exhibition at Americas Society, the first solo show by the artist in a New York museum since his P.S. 1.installation in 1979.

Charney’s work is well-known in Canada and in Europe. His Garden for the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal and the extraordinary Canadian Tribute to Human Rights in Ottawa are among the most important public sculptures created in last 20 years. Retrospective exhibitions in Canada in 1978, 1991, and 2002 have brought his work to broad public attention. Europeans know his work from his regular participation in large exhibitions; his retrospectives in Belgium, France, and Israel; and from the biennales in Venice where he has been the Canadian selection for both the art (1986) and architecture exhibitions (2000). His work is in numerous private and corporate collections in the U.S., Canada, and abroad, as well as in major Canadian art museums including the National Gallery, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Montreal, and the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Americas Society, known for forty years of provocative exhibitions, was the ideal venue to reintroduce Charney’s work to a larger New York audience. In addition to the 30 to 35 painted photographs, the exhibition included large panels with text and images about the major built projects including the famous installation Les maisons de la rue, destroyed by order of the Mayor of Montreal in 1976 who feared that it presented a negative view to visiting tourists. The Americas Society exhibition was an occasion not only for the audience to get to know the work of one of Canada’s most celebrated artists, but also provided an opportunity for challenging public discussions about the city in the 21st century. A major new publication focusing on Charney’s painted photographs accompany the exhibition.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Americas Society hosted public lectures, conversations with the artist and other related cultural and educational programs.

Between Observation and Intervention: The Painted Photographs of Melvin Charney was organized in partnership with the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec.

^{Image: Melvin Charney, Parable No. 22... Battery Park City Finally Starts, New York, 1974, 1994–1995 (detail), oil pastel and acrylic on a gelatin silver print of a newspaper,mounted on board (100%rag), 243.8 x 121.8 cm. Collection Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.}