The Cress Gallery of Art offers the public an unusual exhibition free of charge with the support of The Friends of the Gallery and will bring the artists to Chattanooga as part of the UTC John and Diane Marek Visiting Artist Series.
Renowned photographers Kahn and Selesnick are coming to Chattanooga with work from “The Apollo Prophesies” and “Eisbergfreistadt,” two of their photographic projects that challenge history’s portrayal of the 1969 NASA Apollo Lunar Mission and the 1923 arrival of an iceberg on the shore of the German port city of Lubeck.
Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick research the historical narrative of actual events and then asked themselves: “What if another ‘something’ happened during this sequence of events?”
Using photographs, panoramic photographs, video, objects, sculpture, costume, and ephemera all created by the artists, they present a reality within a reality, along with documentary video of their process.
“Kahn and Selesnick’s work speaks to many academic disciplines. They themselves refer to a course in comparative literature that was as influential to their work as any art course in which they enrolled,” said Ruth Grover, Curator of the Cress Art Gallery.
The exhibition runs through March 16 and is free and open to the public.
Kahn and Selesnick’s photographic documentation mimics that of an explorer or field technician, yet their “field photographs” are choreographed, and professionally illumined. The accumulated “records” then serve as raw material for Kahn and Selesnick’s narrative texts and composite photographs. Ultimately, all are collected into book form uniquely designed by the artists. Aperture Press, New York City, New York, has published four limited edition monographs of the work of Kahn and Selesnick, including The Apollo Prophesies (2006), and a fifth book based on the Eisbergfreistadt project will be forthcoming in 2010.
For more information on the Cress Art Gallery, visit www.utc.edu/cressgallery.
