November 3 – December 17, 2011
Opening reception:
Thursday, November 3, 2011
6.00 – 8.00 p.m.
ClampArt is pleased to announce the opening of “Call It Sleep,” an exhibition of new works by photographer, Marc Yankus – – his third solo show at the gallery.
“Call It Sleep” is taken from the title of Henry Roth’s 1934 novel, which centers on the experiences of a young boy, David Schearl, growing up in the Jewish immigrant ghetto of New York City’s Lower East Side in the early twentieth century. Yankus, drawing on his longtime interest in memory, architecture, and the life of the city, depicts moments of contemplation, stillness, and reverie through blurred streetscapes of fleeting color and the occasional figure. Raised in New York City, Yankus is fascinated by the passage of time and the changes left in its wake as indelibly imprinted on the metropolis’ buildings and streets.
In the project room, Yankus presents selections from a recent series of photomontage still lifes that push his interest in collage further than ever before. These works depict intimate landscapes populated by objects and found images that bring to mind childhood, loss, and the experience of memory, which suggest scenes from a surrealist narrative that is never fully explicated.
Marc Yankus’ fine art and publishing experience span a period of more than forty years. Yankus’ work has been included in exhibitions at The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York; Exit Art, New York City; and the Library of Congress, Washington, DC. His artwork has graced the covers of books by Salman Rushdie, Philip Roth, and Alan Hollinghurst, among many others. His images have also been used for theatrical posters for such acclaimed Broadway shows as “Jane Eyre”; August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”; and John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, “Doubt.” Yankus’ work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.