Gregory Crewdson, “Untitled (17),” pigmented inkjet print, 2009
Gagosian Gallery
980 Madison Ave. between 76th & 77th Sts.
Tuesday – Saturday through October 30
Admission: free
212-744-2313
www.gagosian.com
Brooklyn native Gregory Crewdson makes a dramatic turn in his latest series of photographs, on view at the uptown Madison Ave. Gagosian Gallery through October 30. For years, Crewdson has been taking pictures of carefully arranged tableaux vivants that look like scenes from a never-made movie, filled with mystery and intrigue. For “Sanctuary,” Crewdson went to the famous Cinecittà Studios in Rome, a place where Italian and international directors have gone for decades to make the kind of films that Crewdson has alluded to in his previous work. But in this new series, the first he has done outside America, Crewdson shoots the bare bones of Cinecittà, the vacant streets and backlots, with no people present, just stark architecture overgrown with weeds and rusted scaffolding. Crewdson has returned to black and white for the first time in nearly fifteen years, giving the photos, taken either at sunrise or sunset, a haunting quality; in some ways they are a natural progression for the artist, as if they represent what is left after he completes his staged color photographs, leaving behind empty sets filled with similar mystery and intrigue. Many of the photos feature doorways and other openings and entrances (or exits) that serve as additional frames within the pictures; one even resembles a white movie screen. “As with much of my work,” Crewdson says about the series, “I looked at the blurred lines between reality and fiction, nature and artifice, and beauty and decay.” The result is another mesmerizing collection from one of the country’s most inventive photographers. (While at Gagosian, be sure to also check out “Dike Blair: Sculptures and Paintings,” in which the New York-based artist transforms the wooden crates that paintings and sculptures are shipped in into works of art themselves.)