Guaranteed Dutch Wax Vlisco QY2010602, 2016
C-print made from fabric negative, 38 × 28 inches
Edition 1AP of 1 + 1AP
Framed

Through her experiments with analog darkroom and digital processes, Lisa Oppenheim gives photographic images new forms and new contexts, inviting us to question and to wonder. Over the past decade, in a practice that is characterized by a mix of curiosity, research, and rigor, she has steadily developed a unique oeuvre exploring the use and transformation of pre-existing images, creating photographs and videos that connect historical imagery and techniques with the present. Looking to models from Henry Fox-Talbot to Flickr, Oppenheim also employs unusual materials as photographic negatives — such as fabric (including the work for auction), lace, slices of wood — directly recording the objects’ specific textures and patterns to create sumptuous near-abstract compositions that span the conceptual and the formal. Oppenheim has been included in numerous significant exhibitions examining the reinvention — and reimagining — of photography.

In Art & Auction, Sarah P. Hanson called Oppenheim a magician, noting that: “In its early days the photographic process might have been mistaken by the layman as a kind of magic. New York-based Oppenheim might be thought of as a conjurer for the way she uses her subjects — the sun, the moon, fire — to summon her images into being. But Oppenheim… never fails to add a 21st-century twist or two.”

Oppenheim was part of The Dying of the Light: Film as Medium and Metaphor, a group show at MASS MoCA in 2014. In 2013 her work was featured in MoMA’s distinguished New Photography exhibition series as well as The International Center for Photography Triennial. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; and MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge; among others. In 2014, Lisa was the recipient of both the AIMIA|AGO Photography Prize from the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Shpilman International Prize for Excellence in Photography from the Israel Museum.

Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York

Estimated Value: $13,000

The October 25 live auction will be conducted by Eric Widing, Deputy Chairman, Christie’s Americas. To place an absentee bid, fill out this form, and email it to Rebecca Wehry at rwehry@massmoca.org by 10am on October 25.