Tuesday, February 3

6:30 pm

Aperture Gallery and Bookstore547 West 27th StreetNew York, NY

$5 DONATION

 

This event is free for students with ID and Aperture Members at the $50 level and above.

Aperture Foundation, in collaboration with the Department of Photography at Parsons The New School for Design, is pleased to present an artist talk with Leigh Ledare. Through the use of photography, film, archival materials, and textual documents, Ledare charts the complex and reciprocal nature of relationships between himself and his subjects, who he intimately photographs. His work exposes cultural blind spots by addressing fantasies and desires which are performed by Ledare and his collaborators. In 2009, his series Pretend You’re Actually Alive was installed at Les Recontres d’Arles. To accompany the exhibition, Ledare wrote, “This work is an investigation of how we are formed as subjects not merely on the level of our identities but at the level of our projected desires, aspirations, and needs, drives which often can carry conflicting material, psychological, and ethical demands.”

Leigh Ledare (born in Seattle, 1976) received his MFA from Columbia University in 2008. His work has been exhibited internationally, as the subject of solo surveys at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2013), and WIELS, Brussels (2012), and in solo exhibitions at Mitchell-Innes and Nash, New York (2014); Galerie Max Mayer, Düsseldorf, Germany (2014); the Box, Los Angeles (2012); Pilar Corrias, London (2012); the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture, Moscow (2010); Les Rencontres de Arles, France (2009, 2010); Rivington Arms, New York (2008); and Andrew Roth, New York (2008), among others. His work has appeared in group shows at Metro Pictures, New York (2014); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2012), MoMA PS1, New York (2010); Swiss Institute New York (2009); and Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2008). Publications include Ana and Carl and some other couples, in collaboration with Nicolás Guagnini (New York: Andrew Roth, 2014);Leigh Ledare, et al., (Milan: Mousse Publishing, 2012); Double Bind (Paris: MFC-Michel Didier, 2012); and Pretend You’re Actually Alive (New York: PPP Editions in collaboration with Andrew Roth, 2008).

Image: Leigh Ledare, Alma (Child’s Drawing), 2012

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the board and Members of Aperture Foundation.