DAVID MAISEL: OBLIVION

David Maisel o b l i v i o n Opening reception 04-12-07 5:30-7:30 Haines Gallery 49 Geary Street, Suite 540 San Francisco, CA 94108 April 12 - May 19, 2007 Opening Reception: April 12th, 5:30-7:30pm Haines Gallery is pleased to announce its second solo exhibition with photographer David Maisel. This exhibition features eight prints from Maisel’s recent body of work entitled, Oblivion, a series of aerial images of the city of Los Angeles through both positive and negative prints. We have chosen to emphasize and primarily exhibit the printed negatives for their subversive and edgy nature. William Fox describes these prints as “spooky, post-apocalyptic, complete objects in themselves without being reversed back into a normative view. xthey hold your attention longer as your mind attempts to make sense of out of them.” Maisel writes about this new series of photographs in his recent publication Oblivion released by Nazraeli Press: “In his book Warped Space, Anthony Vidle, the architectural theorist, speaks of the “paranoiac space of modernism,” a space which is “mutated into a realm of panic, where all the limits and boundaries become blurred.” These words come to mind when considering the urban aerial images of Los Angeles and its periphery. Certain spatial fears seem endemic to the modern metropolis, and Los Angeles defines this term in ways that no other American city can approximate.” David Maisel has exhibited widely in the United States. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay area, where he is the vice-president of Photo Alliance, a non-profit organization devoted to contemporary photography. His works are represented in many museum collections, including LACMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the George Eastman House, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. Oblivion published by Nazraeli Press includes 12 full-size black and white plates, and an introduction by independent writer, scholar and poet, William L. Fox. Books are available at Haines Gallery.