Peter Freeman, Inc. is pleased to present Jan Dibbets’ first solo exhibition with the gallery in New York. This exhibition is a rare opportunity to see a selection of critically important works from 1970 to 1984 chosen by the artist, most on view for the first time in many years since their initial showings in museum exhibitions.
A pioneering figure of conceptual art, Dibbets trained as a painter, but began experimenting with photography early on in his career in the 1960s, and was one of the first artists to challenge the camera as a documentary tool. To him, photographs are raw material, to be handled and put to use, like any other medium. By using simple photographic processes and subtle variations from image to image—for instance, in the position of the camera or the quality of natural light—Dibbets is able to completely alter the viewers’ perception of the photographed subject, achieving an abstraction based in reality. The resulting collages, comprised of unique photographs, register the subject, but the subject is only a pretext for transformation.
In navigating a relationship between the conceptual and pictorial, Dibbets frequently employs notions and subjects from the natural world, the horizon for instance. Dibbets has been quoted as saying: “in the whole world, what is more beautiful than a straight line? And the horizon is a straight line in three dimensions, it’s an almost incredible phenomenon” (in Erik Verhagen, Jan Dibbets: The Photographic Work, 2014, page 71). And yet it’s also an illusion, not an objective truth—it is a construction we optically invent to help locate ourselves in the world. This analytical contemplation of illusionistic space and perspective tie him strongly to his art historical forbears – Mondrian and Cézanne among many others—and forms the foundation for the works in the exhibition.
In his panoramas (Paestum Panorama, 1980, and Panorama Bloemendaal 345°, 1971 are on view here), Dibbets links individual photographs, each slightly different from the one before it due to a change in camera position. Though constructed, each composite landscape captures a sense of illusionistic space that is somehow more evocative of the real experience of standing in front of the subject. The artist’s essential ideas about nature, photography, and abstraction are evident in his well-known Comet works (like Comet Land 3°-60° Sky-Land-Sky, 1973, on view here), which are realized according to specific mathematical equations, systematically applied by Dibbets in the ordering, sizing, and content of each photograph. For another work in the exhibition -- Shortest Day Sunrise-Noon Guggenheim NY, 1970 -- Dibbets set out to record the light modulations in a room not through passing shadows, but the level of luminosity, in order to examine how a natural event itself can contribute to the making of an image.
Jan Dibbets was born in 1941 in Weert, Netherlands; he lives and works in Amsterdam. Early in his career Dibbets was included in some of the most seminal exhibitions of conceptual art, including Live in your head - When Attitudes Become Form (Kunsthalle Bern, Bern; Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld; and Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, curated by Harald Szeeman, 1969); 557, 087 (1969, Seattle Art Museum, Vancouver Art Gallery, curated by Lucy Lippard, 1969), and Earth Art (Andrew Dickinson White Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, Willoughby Sharp, 1969). In 1972 he represented The Netherlands in the Venice Biennale. Since then he has been honored with solo exhibitions at many major international museums including the Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris (1976), Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven (1980), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1982 and 1986), Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh (1986), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1987), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1987) and Detroit Institute of Arts (1987), among many others. Important recent solo exhibitions include: Horizons (Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, 19 February – 9 May 2010; exhibition travelled), 3 x Jan Dibbets (Cultuurcentrum Mechelen, Belgium, 15 April – 5 June 2011), and Jan Dibbets: Another Photography (Castello di Rivoli Muso d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, 8 April – 29 June 2014). In March 2016, Musée d'Art Moderne will open an exhibition curated by Dibbets: A History of Another Photography: PANDORA'S BOX (on view through 10 July 2016).
A pioneering figure of conceptual art, Dibbets trained as a painter, but began experimenting with photography early on in his career in the 1960s, and was one of the first artists to challenge the camera as a documentary tool. To him, photographs are raw material, to be handled and put to use, like any other medium. By using simple photographic processes and subtle variations from image to image—for instance, in the position of the camera or the quality of natural light—Dibbets is able to completely alter the viewers’ perception of the photographed subject, achieving an abstraction based in reality. The resulting collages, comprised of unique photographs, register the subject, but the subject is only a pretext for transformation.
In navigating a relationship between the conceptual and pictorial, Dibbets frequently employs notions and subjects from the natural world, the horizon for instance. Dibbets has been quoted as saying: “in the whole world, what is more beautiful than a straight line? And the horizon is a straight line in three dimensions, it’s an almost incredible phenomenon” (in Erik Verhagen, Jan Dibbets: The Photographic Work, 2014, page 71). And yet it’s also an illusion, not an objective truth—it is a construction we optically invent to help locate ourselves in the world. This analytical contemplation of illusionistic space and perspective tie him strongly to his art historical forbears – Mondrian and Cézanne among many others—and forms the foundation for the works in the exhibition.
In his panoramas (Paestum Panorama, 1980, and Panorama Bloemendaal 345°, 1971 are on view here), Dibbets links individual photographs, each slightly different from the one before it due to a change in camera position. Though constructed, each composite landscape captures a sense of illusionistic space that is somehow more evocative of the real experience of standing in front of the subject. The artist’s essential ideas about nature, photography, and abstraction are evident in his well-known Comet works (like Comet Land 3°-60° Sky-Land-Sky, 1973, on view here), which are realized according to specific mathematical equations, systematically applied by Dibbets in the ordering, sizing, and content of each photograph. For another work in the exhibition -- Shortest Day Sunrise-Noon Guggenheim NY, 1970 -- Dibbets set out to record the light modulations in a room not through passing shadows, but the level of luminosity, in order to examine how a natural event itself can contribute to the making of an image.
Jan Dibbets was born in 1941 in Weert, Netherlands; he lives and works in Amsterdam. Early in his career Dibbets was included in some of the most seminal exhibitions of conceptual art, including Live in your head - When Attitudes Become Form (Kunsthalle Bern, Bern; Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld; and Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, curated by Harald Szeeman, 1969); 557, 087 (1969, Seattle Art Museum, Vancouver Art Gallery, curated by Lucy Lippard, 1969), and Earth Art (Andrew Dickinson White Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, Willoughby Sharp, 1969). In 1972 he represented The Netherlands in the Venice Biennale. Since then he has been honored with solo exhibitions at many major international museums including the Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris (1976), Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven (1980), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1982 and 1986), Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh (1986), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1987), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1987) and Detroit Institute of Arts (1987), among many others. Important recent solo exhibitions include: Horizons (Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, 19 February – 9 May 2010; exhibition travelled), 3 x Jan Dibbets (Cultuurcentrum Mechelen, Belgium, 15 April – 5 June 2011), and Jan Dibbets: Another Photography (Castello di Rivoli Muso d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, 8 April – 29 June 2014). In March 2016, Musée d'Art Moderne will open an exhibition curated by Dibbets: A History of Another Photography: PANDORA'S BOX (on view through 10 July 2016).