Linda Salerno: A Selection from the BLACK MIRROR SERIES Exhibition

Linda Salerno

A Selection of Experimental Photographs
From the BLACK MIRROR SERIES

In conjunction with the release of Linda Salerno, published by Charta Art Books, distributed by D.A.P. and available at Baxter St at CCNY

Curated by Martin Kunz & Allen Frame

Exhibition: January 14 – February 26, 2011
Opening reception: Friday, January 14, 6 – 8pm

Baxter St at CCNY is pleased to present the exhibition, Linda Salerno, Selections from the Black Mirror Series, curated by Allen Frame and Martin Kunz, opening Friday, January 14th, 6-8pm. The series was first presented in 2009 in Switzerland at Officinaarte in Magliaso/Lugano. A catalogue for that exhibition is now being released by Charta Art Books and distributed by D.A.P. and will be celebrated at the opening reception.

In her Black Mirror Series of experimental large-scale photographs, Salerno creates a sensual journey through a visionary landscape. Her own self-portrait figure guides the viewer through a lush terrain of dream and memory. A complex blending of painting and photography techniques, these images have less in common with the photographic self-portrait tradition of Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman that emphasizes identity and women’s roles, than with the cinematic precedent of Maya Deren, which ventures into ritual and the unconscious. First of all, the self-portrait figures are not frontal; they are mostly seen from the back or side, as the protagonist leads us through an enigmatic world of metamorphosis, down pathways through foliage or across a terrain shared by fish. With her long hair and full skirt, she is an alluring figure, a spirit to follow in a trance-like state.

Bios:

Salerno, a painter for many years, grew up in Pennsylvania, moved to New York, and lived there until eight years ago when she moved to the Ticino area of Switzerland. Her studio is in Lugano. Salerno’s previous series of paintings, Le Moniteur de la Mode, was presented at The Classroom at PS122 in New York in 2006, (also curated by Allen Frame). In those paintings, she depicted 19th century female figures positioned in an abstracted landscape of botanical motifs. In her Black Mirror Series, she continues her investigation of nature and its cycles of effulgence and decay. Selections from both series are being exhibited currently in Basel at balzerArtprojects.

Baxter St at CCNY exhibition will travel to Centro Luigi Di Sarro in Rome in the fall of 2011, marking the second collaboration between Baxter St at CCNY and the Centro Di Sarro. In 2010 an exhibition of the experimental 70’s photographs of Italian painter Luigi Di Sarro was presented at Baxter St at CCNY, also curated by Allen Frame, a photographer who has been the curator of exhibitions in New York at Art in General and PS122 Gallery.

Martin Kunz, co-curator of Salerno’s exhibition, was Director of the Kunstmuseum Lucerne from 1977-1989, where he curated over 150 exhibitions mainly of contemporary artists. In 1993 he founded and directed the New York Kunsthalle where he introduced artists such as Doug Aitken, Nancy Rubins, and Dan Peterman, and presented special projects with Nancy Spero, Leon Golub, and Louise Bourgeois. From 2004-2006 he was Director of the Ascona Museum of Modern Art in Switzerland. He is editor of Charta Art Books’ Linda Salerno, which contains Salerno’s Black Mirror Series.