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Read Our Review »Gregory Lind Gallery
June 4 - July 11, 2015Info
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http://www.gregorylindgallery.com/
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(415) 296-9661
Phillip Maisel. The Perfect Copy, 2015; installation view, Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco. Courtesy of Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco.
Maisel’s working process involves making precarious arrangements of materials in the studio. He selects accumulated objects, including building materials, studio supplies and photographs, things with histories that are just-perceptible in the physical wear and tear. After establishing the parameters of the composition, he then makes multiple adjustments – repositioning, introducing or extracting various elements – photographing each intervention in a sequence.
The exhibition’s title, The Perfect Copy, refers to the near-impossibility of creating a perfect replica, in that copies almost always lead to the loss or addition of information. Maisel’s works are explorations of this endeavor, which embrace the inevitable failure of the process.
The works evoke the collage style of such twentieth-century Modernists as Kurt Schwitters, who incorporated waste materials picked up from the streets, parks, and industrial sites; Maholy Nagy’s assemblages; and Gyögy Kepes’ photographs. Maisel’s pieces are distinct in that they reveal the capacity for something to be transformed through the act of photographing it. Utilizing a few simple but precise gestures, he seeks to generate a sense of disorientation, meant to provoke a reevaluation of the relationship between vision and perception.