Barbara Steinman
The Place between Places
May 1 – 31, 2025
Opening reception on Saturday May 3rd from 2-5pm.
Olga Korper Gallery is thrilled to present a solo exhibition by celebrated artist Barbara Steinman.
Something has happened. Roland Barthes once coined “that-has been” in describing photography’s unique ability to record time and retain loss. Barbara Steinman’s new works consist of photographs that bear traces of yet another layer of time and of absence. Drawing from her archive as if in search of her own memories, the artist has created paradoxical images that appear to be damaged yet are exquisite. Some are the result of fortuitous technical error or interference (Away; Keeping Time [random]). Others have been deliberately scored by the artist’s hand, so that a white veil superimposes itself onto the image (Eclipse 1, 2 and 3). Yet others reveal an image of land that is not landscape (Still 1 and 2; Ground). Together, these works embrace dislocation as a mode of appearance.
Looking back in the archive and reclaiming beauty through an act of iconoclasm is a recurring gesture in Steinman’s practice — her Reconfigurations photographic series was presented at the gallery in 2013. Though no longer relying on the tactile sensuality of shredded photographs, entangled tape and shattered compact discs, the destructive impulse here is sharper than ever. It lets chance operate randomly seeming to slit the image of a withered rose with clinical precision. It literally and methodically breaches the surface of the image. Bolder even, it lets the image be in views of a mute stand of green oaks that resist seizure. Here, destruction might happen, in reality, and not in a dream.
Something is about to happen. Isn’t this our persistent feeling in front of these works? Golden sunlight breaks through tree branches, shadows and a stormy sky. A path glows in twilight, leading towards the unknown. The world is on the brink of phenomenal change, and we feel it intuitively, like the animals going silent as the moon obscures the sun. These still images are filled with a sense of transformation. Before our eyes, the scoring metamorphoses into aerial waves breathing against a plain piece of lawn. Before our eyes, the glitches in the still life open up a new dimension, breaking away from the flatness of the image towards another space, another place maybe—a place of longing.
The Place between Places. It does not have a name. It could be anywhere. Yet it is somewhere. The exhibition actualizes such an impermanent site for contemplation, memory, and wandering. As the viewer makes their way through the space, they may well encounter and experience thresholds of visibility.
Exhibition essay written by Ji-Yoon Han.
Cover image: Barbara Steinman, Place, 2015 / 2025, inkjet print, 4.5″ x 7.5″ print, 20.5″ x 25.5″ framed.