27 Seconds
Tine Guns, Dea Kulumbegashvili, Yana Kononova, Sara J. Winston
curated by Jenia Fridlyand
November 4th, 2021—January 3rd, 2022 | Press release
OPENING RECEPTION Thursday, November 4th, 6—8pm
Tine Guns, Rocambolesco, 2019
Penumbra Foundation is pleased to present 27 SECONDS, a group exhibition curated by Jenia Fridlyand.
A photograph is made at a specific moment, but the resulting image begins to inhabit its own period of time, when beheld by a viewer. What happens, then, when two or more photographs are viewed next to each other? A group of images may be related by location and subject matter, as well as the photographer’s aesthetic choices and conceptual design. All of these relationships impact the viewer’s perception of time in complicated ways, warping its flow during the viewing experience. In this exhibition, four artists are probing that complexity, each with a particular group of still images.
In film, the images are presented to the viewer at fixed intervals, and the challenge to surrender the control over the viewer's timeline prompted the director/writer Dea Kulumbegashvili to revert to a seemingly simple sequence depicting seemingly simple subject matter. Tine Guns also works with film, but her primary medium is the photobook, where the sequence is fixed, but the rate of its flow is established by the viewer's turning the pages. Guns’ installation “Rocambolesco”, drawing from the images of her eponymous book, adds a spatial aspect to the experience of a single moment – a girl jumping off a cliff on a sultry summer afternoon…The book form is a significant part of Sara J. Winston's practice as well, but “Our body is a clock” is a series of images where the sequence is established by the timeline of the persons being photographed. Yana Kononova predicates her research on the single image, drawing on her background in philosophy to construct conceptually based series. For the work presented in this exhibition, Kononova engaged in a set of darkroom experiments that attempt to emulate the viewer’s visual exploration of a photograph.
Twenty-seven seconds is the average time a viewer spends looking at a work of art in a gallery setting. No need to glance at the clock, but let this number be the starting point for reflecting on the experience of looking at these photographs.
Sara J. Winston Our body is a clock, Green Room 2 (August 2021)
Yana Kononova, Lotophagy #19-17, 2021; Untitled, 2021
About the Curator
Jenia Fridlyand (Moscow, 1975) is a photographer and educator based in New York City and the Hudson Valley. Her photographs and books have been exhibited in the United States and abroad. The self-published edition of Fridlyand’s book Entrance to Our Valley was shortlisted for the Paris Photo - Aperture First Photobook Award 2017, and trade editions were published by TIS Books in 2019 and 2020. She is represented by Gallery Wouter van Leuween.
Fridlyand is a co-founder of Image Threads Collective, a non-profit organization whose mission is to bring together artists, educators, and bookmakers in communities around the world for a mutual exchange of ideas and experiences. She organized and taught workshops and long-term courses in Ukraine, Georgia, Iceland, Canada, and Cuba, and is the chair of the Long Term Program at Penumbra Foundation in New York. Fridlyand studied photography at Centre Iris and Université Paris VIII, and holds an MFA from the University of Hartford’s International Limited-Residency program.
Images © Tine Guns, Dea Kulumbegashvili, Yana Kononova and Sara J. Winston / Penumbra Foundation
Zoom Conversations
Dea Kulumbegashivili in conversation with Adam Meeks
Sara J. Winston in conversation with Terri Weifenbach
These talks were held online as a part of the exhibition
