Tree on the Former Site of Camera Obscura

1996 - Photography (Photography)

Rodney Graham

location: Vancouver, Canada
year born: 1949
gender: male
nationality: Canadian
home town: Vancouver, Canada

Tree on the Former Site of Camera Obscura (1996) belongs to a series of large-scale photographs of trees taken by Graham and depicts a particular species that lives in Northern California. The photograph is framed upside down; these “inverted trees” follow Graham’s early experiments with the camera lucida, a room-size pinhole camera that dates back to ancient times. Through these works Graham looks back at the history of photography while making the viewer aware of his or her own retinal experience.


Conceptual artist Rodney Graham’s oeuvre is highly versatile and intellectual. By incorporating fictional narratives and alternative interpretations into an existing context, Graham creates visual puns that layer historical reference to examine social and philosophical systems. Not only is Graham the behind-the-scenes sculptor, photographer, filmmaker, inventor, scholar, writer and singer in his projects, he also literally appears in the finished works, impersonating various fictional characters.


Colors:



Pipe Opening
© » KADIST

Jeff Wall

2002

As suggested by its title, Pipe Opening (2002) depicts a hole in a wood wall exposed by the removal of a pipe...

Pair of shoes / Shoes with eggs
© » KADIST

Hans-Peter Feldmann

The types of objects Feldmann is interested in collecting into serial photographic grids or artist’s books are often also found in three dimensional installations...

The End One
© » KADIST

Raymond Pettibon

2005

The five works included in the Kadist Collection are representative of Pettibon’s complex drawings which are much more narrative than comics or cartoon...

Martin Creed | The Dick Institute
© » TATE EXHIBITIONS

Martin Creed

Martin Creed | The Dick Institute Experience the work of one of this country’s most ingenious, audacious and surprising artists at the Dick Institute ARTIST ROOMS Martin Creed presents highlights from the British artist’s thirty-year career...

Untitled (Breathless)
© » KADIST

Ian Wallace

2000

Untitled (Breathless) presents a folded newspaper article on Jean-Luc Godard’s À Bout de Souffle (Breathless)...

Untitled
© » KADIST

Martin Kippenberger

1989

Untitled is a work on paper by Martin Kippenberger comprised of several seemingly disparate elements: cut-out images of a group of dancers, a japanese ceramic vase, and a pair of legs, are all combined with gestural, hand-drawn traces and additional elements such as a candy wrapper from a hotel in Monte Carlo and a statistical form from a federal government office in Wiesbaden, Germany...

Monteverdi Ici
© » KADIST

Laure Prouvost

2018

Monteverdi Ici by Laure Prouvost is a non-narrative video work that depicts the back of the artist’s naked body standing, with her back towards the camera in a field...

Study for my Heroes in the Street (Stan)
© » KADIST

Ian Wallace

1986

Wallace says of his Heroes in the Street series, “The street is the site, metaphorically as well as in actuality, of all the forces of society and economics imploded upon the individual, who, moving within the dense forest of symbols of the modern city, can achieve the status of the heroic.” The hero in Study for my Heroes in the Street (Stan) is the photoconceptual artist Stan Douglas, who is depicted here (and also included in the Kadist Collection) as an archetypal figure restlessly drifting the streets of the modern world...

The Parle Ment Metal Woman Welcoming You
© » KADIST

Laure Prouvost

2017

The Parle Ment Metal Woman Welcoming You is a character originated from a series of works combining sculpture and video with a specific role— lying on the floor playing a romantic elevator tune, this Metal Woman welcomes and flirts with viewers in the space where she is posed...

Untitled (City Limits)
© » KADIST

Allen Ruppersberg

1970

Untitled (City Limits) is a series of five black-and-white photographs of road signs, specifically the signs demarcating city limits of several small towns in California...

Hat with photograph
© » KADIST

Hans-Peter Feldmann

The types of objects Feldmann is interested in collecting into serial photographic grids or artist’s books are often also found in three dimensional installations...

20 Surrogates
© » KADIST

Allan McCollum

1982

In the work titled The Glossies (1980), an affinity for photography manifested itself before McCollum actually began to use photography as a medium...

Towhead n’Ganga enclosed in darkness, lorded over by the sexualized folded high priestless form
© » KADIST

Mike Kelley

1996

Towhead n’Ganga, enclosed in darkness, lorded over by the sexualized folded high priestless form reflects many of Kelley’s works, in both its compositional and semantic qualities...

Michigan Central Station
© » KADIST

Stan Douglas

1997

Michigan Central Station is part of a larger photographic series, Detroit Photos , which includes images of houses, theaters, stadiums, offices, and other municipal structures...

Sal Sem Carne
© » KADIST

Cildo Meireles

1975

Meireles, whose work often involves sound, refers to Sal Sem Carne (Salt Without Meat) as a “sound sculpture.” The printed images and sounds recorded on this vinyl record and it’s lithographed sleeve describe the massacre of the Krahó people of Brazil...

Suspension
© » KADIST

Sebastián Díaz Morales

2014

In Suspension a young man is hanging in the air, falling, or perhaps drifting through time and space...

Plug the well ( July / August 2003)
© » KADIST

Keith Tyson

The work of Keith Tyson is concerned with an interest in generative systems, and embraces the complexity and interconnectedness of existence...

Untitled (San Francisco)
© » KADIST

Edward Kienholz

1984

Untitled (San Francisco) was made in Idaho in 1984 and was facetiously dedicated to Henry Hopkins, the then director of the San Francisco Museum of Art who added “modern” to its name...

Raven (gun)
© » KADIST

Catherine Opie

1987

In this work, a woman sits on a couch with her shirt pulled up to expose her pierced nipples, which are connected by a chain...