Lewis Baltz Portfolios

March 4 - May 20, 2017

Curated by Lee Plested

Drawn entirely from the private collection of David Knaus, Palm Springs, the exhibition is an opportunity to experience Baltz’s early work in its intended form, organized in grids of images from portfolios of serial shots. This will be the first solo exhibition of Lewis Baltz’s concept driven photography in Vancouver. At this time, we will also present a concise Selection from the Collection of Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft to further explore the stark photographic mode that, along with Lewis Baltz, gained attention through the 1975 exhibition New Topographics.

Acclaimed for his serial investigations of the industrialized landscape, Lewis Baltz shot the America of the 70s and 80s with an objective cool that found its reductive method in the deliberate, formal approach of Minimalism. By serializing his images in grids, he has able to achieve a near cinematic experience. This deliberate shift from the individual shot was, at the time, a major innovation in the presentation of photography. Baltz’s art takes serious looking, moving from one small format image to the next, each as formally charged as the last. Every incident takes looking and digesting before we take on another, the sum accumulating in a complex take on that moment, that site. We are freed from the romantic revelry of the singular image, presented with the multifarious actuality of place.

The work of Lewis Baltz came to be widely known through the 1975 exhibition New Topographics, which was subtitled Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape. The exhibition had an enormous influence on the idea based projects of contemporary photographers. Selections from the Collection of Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft will present works by New Topographic artists Robert Adams, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joe Deal, and a contemporaneous diptych by Jeff Wall.

This exhibition has been made possible with the generous support of collectors David Knaus, Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft, Theresa Luisotti and everybody at Gallerie Luisotti, Los Angeles, Griffin Art Foundation, and our dedicated board and staff.