Sam Krisch Brochure

SAM KRISCH: Elements Ruth C. Horton Gallery December 4, 2014–February 1, 2015

The sheer power and splendor of nature in far away places is the subject of Sam Krisch’s photographic practice. Over the last five years, Krisch has journeyed to remote locations ranging from the Mojave Desert, Greenland, Antarctica, and Bhutan to capture exquisite images of ice formations, the raw force of turbulent waters, or empty expanses of desert landscapes. This exhibition presents a selection of the artist’s digital photographs created between 2010 and 2014 in which his approach to composition verges on the abstract, taking the work beyond documentation into a world of pristine, but daunting beauty. These are gorgeous, even idyllic landscapes, tinged nonetheless with the terrifying knowledge that these worlds are slipping away in an irrevocable trajectory caused by human forces.

Krisch first became interested in photography when he was 14, but it was not until 30 years later in 2008 that he began actively pursuing photography as an art form. He has since developed a number of photographic series, including Sea, Sand, Ice, and Passages, from which the works on view here are drawn. He has also created a body of works with the iPhone. The works in this exhibition are digital photographs created with a Canon full-frame Digital Single-Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera with a variety of lenses, or similar Sony or Nikon equipment.

Digital technology and readily available high-quality cameras have radically expanded and transformed photographic practice, enlarging the field of professional-level practitioners. Krisch is one of many artists working with landscape photography today, documenting and re-presenting images of the natural landscape and how it is perceived. Giants in the field that come immediately to mind are Richard Misrach and Edward Burtynsky, with their magnificent, monumentally scaled works that, for all their beauty, demonstrate how humans are scarring and destroying our environment.

Krisch’s art differs from those masters in scope and scale, as well as sensibility. The nature that Krisch portrays is not scarred; it is awe-inspiring and full of mystery. Powerful and excruciatingly beautiful. He states: I have gone specifically to document the beauty of the locations— “ the sculptural, crystalline feel of ice, the quiet drama of the desert, the energy and isolation of the sea, the life of the land.”1

White Sands II, 2012 White Sands, New Mexico 44 x 35 inches

Front cover:

All works:

Death Valley II, 2014 (detail)

Archival ink digital prints

Mesquite Dunes, California

All works courtesy of the artist

24 x 49 inches

Night Castle, 2012 Antarctica 24 x 51 inches

Like the 19 th century Romantic landscape painters Thomas Cole (1801–1848), Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902), or, more recently, the iconic photographer Ansel Adams (1902–1984), Krisch chooses to portray an idealized wilderness—for the most part, a resplendent nature. A still, meditative beauty permeates his photographs, skirting or concealing the underlying danger, even treachery that nature can wield. Sandstorm (2012) portrays a luminous, mysterious, and almost glorious scene in the White Sands Desert of New Mexico, as golden light from a sinking sunset shimmers through rising gusts of sand.

Night Castle (2012) portrays a breathtaking, seemingly magical specter of “heroic and majestic” icebergs floating out to sea.

Galaxy Dune, 2014 Death Valley, California 30 x 44 inches

More daunting, but especially stunning are Krisch’s images from his Passage series of some of the world’s most ferocious seas between Argentina and Antarctica. Galaxy Dune (2014), an image taken in the remote reaches of Death Valley, beckons us with its velvety, glistening silence, even though Krisch, himself, speaks about the desert’s intimidating vastness and harshness, fraught with anxiety and fear. Nonetheless, in his photographs, Krisch represents nature in idyllic terms, and, in this respect, shares affinities with the photographer Jean Paul Caponigro, a mentor and key influence on Krisch’s work. The quiet gratitude and grace that imbues Caponigro’s art, his exploration of light, space, and time, and their spiritual dimensions resonate in Krisch’s photographs. The desert and sea, Krisch’s key subjects, are potent metaphors. Throughout history, deserts have been places for pilgrims and mystics, just as seas suggest not only adventure, but points of departure, settings for odysseys and renewals, spaces to journey through and be changed by. And throughout all the photographs in this exhibition is a seemingly infinite silence, and a sense of timelessness, as if time—as fluid, ever changing, and unstoppable as it is—has slowed down its irrevocable course. The passage of time and its attendant sense of loss all permeate Krisch’s art. He comments: “While these images are not meant to be didactic or political, I have captured slices of time that can never repeat and scenes that may never be approximated again.

Light and weather change. Ice melts. Sand shifts. Tides rise and fall.”2

Natural cycles and the forces of change are certainly referred to here. But that is not all. Krisch speaks about how he feels “as if he is capturing an exquisite, but disappearing world,” a poignant reference to man-made forces that are altering, dissolving, and destroying these environments.

In 1952, the renowned photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) asserted that the task of photography was to capture “the decisive moment,” to identify and capture, in a fraction of a second, the significance of an event. In rendering the inescapable power and beauty of these remote landscapes, Krisch succeeds in capturing a “decisive moment,” and this at a pivotal point in time when the natural wonders of the world as we know it are at risk.

In an era when we spend less and less time outside and have less and less contact with the natural environment, it becomes ever more important to take the time to behold the wonders of nature, to take a moment to acknowledge that we live on a magnificent, if increasingly vulnerable planet. Krisch’s work takes us there.

Disko Bay #4, 2013 Greenland 32 x 44 inches

Margo Ann Crutchfield Curator at Large Untitled, 2011 Mesquite Dunes, California 24 x 51 inches

Endnotes 1. “ About my photography,” artist statement, accessed Oct. 6, 2014, http://samkrisch.com.

2. “ Above Zero: Travels in the Polar Regions,” artist statement, accessed Oct. 7, 2014, http://samkrisch.com.

Passage V, 2014

Passage VI, 2014

Passage VII, 2014

Antarctica

Antarctica

Antarctica

24 x 24 inches

24 x 24 inches

24 x 24 inches

Works in the exhibition With the exception of Night Castle (2012) and Palace (2014), the works on view here are being exhibited for the first time.

All works: Archival ink digital prints Dimensions: Print size in inches h x w All works courtesy of the artist Death Valley II, 2014 Mesquite Dunes, California 24 x 49

Deception Island I, 2014 Antarctica 30 x 44

White Sands II, 2012 White Sands, New Mexico 44 x 35

Galaxy Dune, 2014 Death Valley, California 30 x 44

Deception Island II, 2014 Antarctica 30 x 44

Palouse II, 2012 Washington State 35 x 44

Eureka Dunes, 2014 Death Valley, California 34 x 44

Disko Bay #4, 2013 Greenland 32 x 44

Snake River Canyon, 2012 Eastern Idaho 29 x 44

Passage V, 2014 Antarctica 24 x 24

Sandstorm, 2012 White Sands, New Mexico 24 x 54

Scapes V, 2011 Mesquite Dunes, California 24 x 51

Passage VI, 2014 Antarctica 24 x 24

Palace, 2012 Antarctica 30 x 44

Untitled, 2011 Mesquite Dunes, California 24 x 51

Passage VII, 2014 Antarctica 24 x 24

Night Castle, 2012 Antarctica 24 x 51

Rice Paddies, 2010 Bhutan 29 x 44

Sandstorm, 2012 White Sands, New Mexico 24 x 54 inches

About the artist

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Sam Krisch received a BA in history from Harvard University, and an MA in liberal studies in humanities and an MA in film studies and screenwriting from Hollins University. He serves as adjunct curator of photography and museum school instructor at the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Virginia.

Solo exhibitions of Krisch’s work include: Above Zero: Travels in the Polar Regions, 2014, Capital One West Creek Campus Conference Center, Richmond, Virginia; and Roaming Plan: iPhone Adventures, 2013, Ann White Academy Gallery, Academy of Fine Arts, Lynchburg, Virginia. His work was also included in the group exhibition State of The Art: Virginia Crossroads at the Taubman Museum of Art. Krisch’s work is also featured in several collections, including those of Capital One, The Trust Company of Virginia, and the Taubman Museum of Art.

The following events are free.

Artist Talk: Sam Krisch Friday, December 5, 2014, 6:45 PM Ruth C. Horton Gallery Friday, January 30, 2015, 6:15 PM Ruth C. Horton Gallery Remarks by the artist about his work in a casual, conversational atmosphere

Gallery Hours Tuesday-Friday, 10 AM–6 PM Saturday and Sunday, 10 AM–4 PM The Moss Art Center is closed December 22, 2014, through January 4, 2015.

An audio guide for Sam Krisch: Elements is now available through your cell phone. To hear insights into his process and stories about the work from the artist himself, dial 540-209-9027 and press item 12#.

For more information about this and future exhibitions, visit www.artscenter.vt.edu.

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