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Passengers: 1.6 Annette KelmPost an Event »

CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts

February 6 - March 2, 2008

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360 Kansas Street San Francisco, CA 94103
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Passengers: 1.6 Annette Kelm
Deceptively simple at first glance, Annette Kelm's images are typified by an immediately graspable form—a pair of gloves, for instance, or a burnt log in a fireplace, a house on a hill, or a cowboy on a horse. Indeed, they are so perfectly executed in their framing and clarity that they give the impression of found images, cropped from the pages of a magazine fashion spread or advertisement. Their central focus is abundantly clear, and the artist's insistence on our observation of the subject (there is no ambiguity as to what we are supposed to see) is so forceful that one quickly becomes aware of the details that attracted her to it. And these particulars are such that we soon realize that the image could never have been simply found. Each of the German artist's works, and in particular their cumulative effect when they are installed in carefully selected groups or diptychs, unfolds a precisely executed combination of formal, historical, and contextual references.