Van Doren Waxter is pleased to present a special project by Tim Davis: Forgeries, on view from September 10 – October 31. The photographs in this series are made in response to Van Doren Waxter’s current exhibition of early collages by Joseph Cornell. Davis addresses the collages by thinking not about their form or content, but about their essence. Collage is a recycling medium, taking existing images, tearing them apart and repurposing them. Davis uses his own images, burning old 11 x 14 in. prints and re-photographing them as they bubble, burn, and turn to ash. The results take the purposeful, documentary glee of camera-based photography and ignore all its certainties. Called Forgeries to refer both to the copying of an image and to the burning of one in a forge, these pictures watch the life seep out of a photograph, and pour into a new, more material vessel.
Tim Davis was born 1969 and lives and works in Tivoli, NY. He received a B.A. from Bard College (where he currently teaches), an M.F.A. from Yale University. Solo exhibitions include Jay Jopling / White Cube, London; Edward Mitterand, Geneva; Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels; Susanne Vielmetter, LA; Moscow Photobiennale, Moscow; Rome Commission, Macro Museum, Rome. His work is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Guggenheim Museum, and The Walker Art Center, among many others.
The exhibition will be presented in Van Doren Waxter’s Viewing Room concurrent with Joseph Cornell: A New Surrealism, Works from the 1930’s in the main gallery.
