From David Graver’s story on Jill Greenberg’s “Paintings” for Cool Hunting:
On the fifth floor of a joint residential/workspace building in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, photographer Jill Greenberg set up shop back in 1997. While she would leave in 2000 for the West Coast, 12 years later she returned and the studio itself has had a resounding impact on her latest gallery show “Paintings.” We’ve been following Greenberg for years now, but this latest crop of calculated and chaotic works delivers a new dimension to her already stunning array of accomplishments.
The large-scale works are photographs taken of Greenberg’s own experimental paintings atop glass, featuring light reflected in wet paint smears and globs, as well as images cast through stencils. There’s very little post-production and these are not composites—rather, pigment and light are being photographed. “I am trying to comment on the war between painting and photography,” Greenberg shares with CH. “Clearly there is one. Photography continues to be really disrespected, even as a result of there being so many photographers. It becomes more questionable; the value of a photograph and the skills needed to make a photograph. Anyone can take a picture with an SLR and press a ‘Photoshop filter.’ My filter is my brain. It’s me.” And yet, with all the gravity in tow, they’re also very fun pictures.
View the exhibition at ClampArt
Browse all of Jill Greenberg’s work at ClampArt