John Gossage (b. 1946) is well-known to fellow artists for his enigmatic projects and extensive photobook production, yet remains something of a secret to the broader community. First exhibiting with Leo Castelli in 1975, Gossage has spent nearly four decades mining the intersection of photography and contemporary art. His first book, The Pond (Aperture, 1985), is a classic among photographers and educators, in no small part due to a non-traditional visual language and quotidian subject matter. Gossage consistently manages to gently upend our expectations of how a photograph operates.
Who Do You Love presents a tightly curated group of unique, never-before-seen pieces―photographic distractions, in the words of the artist―from the 1990s, culled from hundreds made over the course of that decade. Using simple materials, they push at the edge between collage and straight photography, not sitting squarely in either space. A traditional photographic image takes you “elsewhere” and “previously”; the photographic frame acts as a threshold to another place and time. By presenting each image unobscured but in tandem with collage-like elements and handmade marks, Gossage breaks the basic photographic illusion and directs one’s attention back to the surface of the work―to the present―with a rare sophistication.
These twelve works survey a decade-long artistic practice that occured concurrently with a straight photographic discipline. A catalogue of the work, including an interview with the artist, is available in very limited quantities.
John Gossage (b. 1946) was born in NYC and is based in Washington D. C. His first monograph, The Pond (1985), was recently reissued; other notable titles include Stadt Des Schwarz (1987); There and Gone (1997); Snake Eyes (2002); Berlin in the Time of the Wall (2004); and The Thirty-Two Inch Ruler/Map of Babylon (2010). His work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Sprengel Museum, Hannover, among others. A major exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago is planned for early 2015.
