Buffalo, NY – Eleven Twenty Projects is pleased to present an exhibition of the latest series of photographs by Buffalo artist Biff Henrich.
The Structure of Things Part II showcases a series of photographic prints that push the envelope of our traditional understanding of the medium. Key to the realization of these works is Henrich’s masterful "in-camera" process—all images are created in the moment of capture and do not rely upon post-capture editing effects. Rather than documenting a scene directly—indeed, sources for these images may be quite banal—the artist shapes a new reality through this unusual and impromptu process. As a result, Henrich's colorful images become painterly abstractions with only hints of the recognizable.
Photography having once been presumed to replace painting, Henrich hybridizes the two in a manner both technical and ineffable. With photography today unencumbered by any technical limitations, Henrich forces himself to function within a specific set of parameters as an effort to realize an unexpected image. He is reinjecting the painterly into the photographic and the analogue into the digital.
Henrich’s works—as with works of painted abstraction—give the viewer room to approach the abstracted space and seek their own resolution to its ambiguous offerings. While time and space are inescapable subjects in reading of a photograph, these images are indefinite and often ethereal, functioning more as color field paintings, inviting the audience to have their own personal, emotional, and imaginative response.
As Henrich himself notes, “The photographs I make are visual experiences that are derived from our everyday world but do not exist in it.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Biff Henrich is an award-winning photographer from Buffalo, NY whose work is in many public and private collections including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Princeton University Gallery of Art. The artist’s work is has been shown nationally in venues such as the Albright Knox Art Gallery, P.S. 1, Artists Space, and Contemporary Art Museum of Houston. Henrich is the former Director of CEPA Gallery, where he is currently on the Board of Directors.