Ruth Van Beek and Ed Gilbert

Friday, December 9th, 2016 7:30 PM PST
San Francisco Art Institute Lecture Hall
800 Chestnut St, San Francisco, CA 94133

This event is presented in partnership with the San Francisco Art Institute

About Ruth Van Beek:

“For me the attraction of photography has always been very attached to it’s physical appearance. The old analogue album photo, a pass photo in a wallet, a damaged picture found on the street. The combination of what is on the image and the shape that its is in provides the image with an important extra layer of drama”.

Born in Zaandam, the Netherlands in 1977. Lives and works in Koog aan de Zaan, The Netherlands.

Ruth van Beek graduated in 2002 from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam following a Master in Photography.  Her work was presented in several solo and group exhibition in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Berlin, Austin, New York and Beijing. Works have been published online and in magazines worldwide such as such as Time Magazine, Capricious, Foam Magazine, Fantom Magazine, Rodeo, It's Nice That, and recently in the British Journal of Photography where she has been selected as one of BJP's 20 photographers to watch in 2013.  In 2011 she published her first book “The Hibernators” at RVB books in Paris. Followed by The Arrangement in 2013.

In a growing archive of found photographic material, images are arranged in constantly changing ways. From these odd combinations and decontextualized images Ruth van Beek makes her work.

Van Beek treats the photos she collects as objects. By cutting and folding, adding shapes of watercolor painted paper and connecting similar elements in different pictures, she makes the form, scale and colour interplay. These interventions are never hidden, but play a lead role in the work.

Van Beek uses the visual codes of photography, a dark backdrop, a shadow, a pedestal, or the way a person holds someting in their hands, to guide the viewer into believing in the incredible rarity or importance of the shown object or animal.

Displayed as archeological objects, puzzling valuables of an unknown time, they form a collection in which not only the story within one image is important, but in which the interaction between the different works and their fysical appearance tell a story of their own.
The work becomes mysterious, non-chronological, and as a whole never finished. An encyclopaedic series showing a hidden world within existing photography. A world of dreams and nightmares, weirdness, futillities and beautifull coincidences.

About Ed Gilbert:

Curator and Director of the Anglim Gilbert Gallery, San Francisco.  Gilbert will speak on some of his favorite artists utilizing photography and collage.