The Brooklyn—Walla Walla Express

While moving out to the west coast from Brooklyn, after having lived there for nearly 15 years, I found myself experiencing an interminable series of interactions between Leaving and Arriving that gave me some awareness of the present moment, every moment. Each step of the way, I left, I arrived: Brooklyn, New London, Columbia County, Bloomsburg, Madison, Sherry, Minneapolis, Dickinson, Red Lodge, Missoula, Willowa, Walla Walla. The threads that bound me to Brooklyn pulling and stretching and gradually giving way to threads tethering me westward. The present continuously fueled by images of past and future. backward. FORWARD. ni-hao. DEATH PENALTY. cortelyou. BACK YARD WITH GARDEN. don’t block the box. DRY HEAT. natori. MICRO-BREWS. There was never a clear-cut view in any given moment of when my past with Brooklyn was succeeded by my future in Walla Walla, just a steady awareness of a tension existing in my present, evinced by a procession of images demanding to be acknowledged, refusing to be identified, complying only with their individual chronologies.

1, 36

2, 35

3, 34

4, 33

5, 32

6, 31

7, 30

8, 29

9, 28

10, 27

11, 26

12, 25

13, 24

14, 23

15, 22

16, 21

17, 20

18, 19

New Photo-bookwork: The Mirror

I self-published this work last November and am finally posting it here. Below is the press release. A solo show of this work opens May 2, in Hudson, New York--Please see previous post.

The Mirror, by David Schulz, edition of 200, offset printed, perfect-bound,  44 pages, 7 x 9”, 2008. 

The Mirror is a parallel narrative of photographic image and text that contains a story about a man watching a video of his parents, with his wife. As time unfolds, he realizes his dad is actually alone (in the physical world)—his mother is a ghost. Still later, he realizes he is alone—his wife vanishes into thin air. But the story is not about being alone, it’s about how everything is at once itself and an image of itself. As with a mirror, on one side you stand; on the other, your image stands. In the story, his awareness of his predicament becomes his image. 

Formally, The Mirror’s double-paged spreads with full-bleed photographs, mimic the subject-object relationship that plays out in a mirror. The photographic content—peripheral views of the everyday—comments on the ebb and flow of things in the world as we gain conscious recognition of them, and lose them, as we lose our memories, in a fluid state of preformation.

In 2009, The Mirror will be exhibited as a solo exhibition at Gallery 345 in Hudson, New York, starting May 2. The Mirror will also be exhibited as part of a photo-bookworks workshop at the Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe. And plans are developing for an international photo-bookworks conference hosted by the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York that will include exhibition of The Mirror.

The work of David Schulz is primarily concerned with narrative structures. Through the parallel use of photographic imagery and text, he explores motifs such as reflection, memory, and identity. He employs a peripheral seeing of things in the everyday (trees, roadside curbs, radiators, open spaces) as a primary trope for illuminating substantive human qualities and conditions. Photographically, David’s work generally takes the form of assemblage. Whether it is two images, vertically or horizontally adjacent, or four or five images in a cluster, relationships of images pose questions concerning the physical and metaphysical (what is the difference between things and images of things?); ontology (what is the difference between images and memories?); and language (how do we read images? How do they function linguistically?).

Other photo-bookworks created by David Schulz include Variations of a Fall (Visual Studies Workshop, 2002), Travelogue (Hammer Productions, 2001), and Non-Identifying Social Genetic Report (Hammer Productions, 1999). 

David Schulz has exhibited with many galleries and organizations in the New York City area including Gigantic Art Space, the Front Room, Dumbo Arts Center, Pratt Institute (where he is a member of the faculty), the Parrish Art Musuem, and the Cellar Gallery (co-founder, 1996). Additionally, David’s work has been included in two exhibitions at the Brooklyn Art Museum: Artists’ Books, 2000, and Open House, 2004. He is part of the following collectives: Nurture Art, White Columns, Pierogi 2000 (flat files), Art in General, and Gallery 345. His photo-bookworks are held in various national and international collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Yale University Library, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Walker Art Museum, the Getty Research Library, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

David lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Solo show, at Gallery 345, Hudson, NY

I'm having a solo show in Hudson, New York at Gallery 345 that opens Saturday, May 2, 2009! Here's the info:

David Schulz, The Mirror

May 2-31, 2009

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 2, 5-9pm

Photo-bookwork available, edition of 200

davidschulzworks.com

Gallery 345

345 Warren Street, Hudson, New York

518.392.2730

www.collective345.blogspot.com Gallery Hours: Fridays, 4-7pm, 

Saturdays and Sundays, 1-5pm, and by appointment

Group Show, Surface, at Brooklyn Artist's Gym

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 28, 6-9 pm

See 2 of my prints from Mirage--one of them pictured above was used for the show's postcard.

Brooklyn Artist's Gym

168 7th Street, 3rd Floor

Brooklyn, NY 11215

718.858.9069

www.brooklynartistsgym.com