Tina West - Minutes

March 10-April 15, 2010
Opening reception Wednesday, March 10 5:30 - 8:30

The Robin Rice Gallery announces MINUTES, a solo photography exhibition by Tina West. The opening reception will be held March 10, 2010 with the show running through April 25.

As if developed from memory, West’s latest collection channels imagery from a familiar past life. Just as the DaDa artists utilized art objects in unconventional forms produced by unconventional methods, West employees coincidence as a means of production. In the title piece, MINUTES, West captures the chance appearance of a bug on her windowsill, overshadowed by a blurred timer in the background. The image is striking with the distinct outline of the bug’s antennae forming a heart above the lifeless figure, also intimate through the juxtaposition of the subjects and the happenstance that unifies them.

Reminiscent of Josef Sudek’s Still Lifes, West’s images are painterly, presenting themselves as either single entities or still-life constructions and assemblages. Many of her photographs created themselves around the objects – whether fishhooks, a mysterious container or firecrackers—West is able to recall a once-forgotten image as a beautiful snapshot of nostalgia and warmth.

A photographer by trade, West considers herself a still-life imagist. A unifying thread of simplicity exists throughout her work – illustrated though her use of a single light source, timeless and seemingly meaningless objects and shadows – a combination that evokes a sense of wonder and awe at the images that seem to have sprung from nothing.

From Kansas City, Tina West discovered photography while studying sculpture. Living in New York since 1989, she is a commercial photographer working for clients such as Knopf Books, Vintage Books, Simon & Schuster, Citibank, Atlantic Records, Elle Magazine and Scientific American Magazine. This is her fourth solo show at The Robin Rice Gallery.