Janna Ireland: The Spotless MirrorPost an Event »

Tyler Wood Gallery

March 7 - April 26, 2014

Info

• http://www.tylerwoodgallery.com/index.php

• 1.415.345.1946

794 Sutter Street

San Francisco

,

CA

94109

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Ireland photographs herself playing a character in a particular setting: a wealthy woman at home. Ireland also photographs objects in and around the home: a tabletop sculpture, a rosebush, an egg, the pool, a chandelier reflected in a vanity mirror. The woman seems to fold herself into the environment and becomes one of the objects in her home.

Conceptually we begin seeing the images as interchangeable: the woman at breakfast is the egg is the rosebush is the wife is the pool. Because the subject matter is monochromatic, focus shifts to the frames of the photographs and the fact that they themselves are objects in a context—specifically the gallery context. Ireland implicates the viewer and questions his relationship to the photographs and the wealthy woman at home.

Ireland also implicates western art history by representing objects that have taken on symbolic meaning: an egg for fertility, pearls for purity, a pear for marital fidelity, oranges for free will. Appropriating these symbols she includes a wealthy black woman in a history long reserved for white people.

Janna Ireland received her BFA (’07) from New York University and MFA (’13) from University of California Los Angeles. In 2013 she had a one-person exhibition at Schneider Gallery, Chicago, and was awarded the Snider Prize from the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College in Chicago. Ireland lives and works in New York.