From Friday, 12 March 2010 - 17:30 To Saturday, 10 April 2010 - 10:00
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EXHIBITION DATES: March 11 - April 10, 2010 RECEPTION: March 11, 5.30 - 7.30 p.m.
Rena Bransten Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of Candida Höfer’s photographs from her zoologische gärten series. In these works, Höfer shifts her focus away from interiors to take viewers on an international tour of zoos in Germany, Spain, England, France, and the Netherlands. Implementing her typically descriptive style, Höfer’s images again seek to deconstruct the role institutions play in defining the viewer’s gaze by documenting animals in their caged environments. Enclosures, which the viewer begins to sense are, in fact, elaborate stage settings - modernist imaginings of a utopian natural world. However, the exotic, wild animals such as alligators, elephants, tigers, and giraffes appear listless, despondent, and are turned away from the camera – marginalized within their own surroundings. Within this context, Höfer strips the zoos of their magical luster, revealing not only the vast disparity between reality and the idealized, but also, perhaps, offering commentary on exactly how passive the gaze of the viewer within an institutional environment has become.
Höfer was born in Eberswalde, Germany and studied photography with Bernd & Hilla Becher. She has shown extensively internationally at renowned institutions such as Le Louvre in France, Kunstaus Hamberg in Germany, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. In 2010, her work will be exhibited at Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Sevilla and MARCO Museo de Arte Contemporanea de Vigo in Spain, and the Oldenburger Kunstverein in Germany.
Jennie Smith continues to expand on her visual lexicon of lush and delicate worlds in her third exhibition at the Rena Bransten Gallery. In her new body of work, Smith explores the problematic relationship between humankind and nature. Utilizing the action of drawing as a process to stream the unconscious, Smith conjures narrative scenes about animals and humans who have lost habitat and home. The drawings depict empty garments of displaced people – homeless and landless for political or environmental reasons. Animals mend their own habitats or morph themselves into kites and find their future in the open expanse of the sky. Through her work, Smith hopes to create some type of accountability for our species while simultaneously, through the use of the collective human imagination, offering a glimpse into a better world.
Smith was born in 1981 in San Francisco, California where she currently lives and works. She received her BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. Her previous projects include the Bulletin Board at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2006); her work was also featured in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, New York. Smith's work is in the collections of The Drawing Center, New York and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Location : Rena Bransten Gallery, 77 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA 94108 Contact : 415-982-3292
All repeats 
