Exhibition Information

			The Gibson/Goeun Museum of Photography has displayed the major works of Ralph Gibson, a master of surrealist photography since it opened on October 10, 2022. It is holding its third exhibition, Political Abstraction, which offers a glimpse into Gibson’s outstanding style of sensuality.

Political Abstraction is Gibson’s second digital work series following his MONO series. Color and black-and-white photographic diptychs (the placing of two separate images side by side on a page) and paired works demonstrate the connection between two images. The pictures included in Political Abstraction were photographed while Gibson was traveling, but no specific information about the countries or places is provided. It shows his “visual signature,” or the manner of abstracting reality that he has consistently sought. The “Harmonies of angles and curves”, “contrasts of light and dark”, and “doubles of shape or pattern” generate relationships between two images rather than a single image deep dive. The viewer becomes the subject interpreting the connection between two images.

All of the 71 works displayed in the exhibition were photographed using a Leica Monochrome or M240 digital camera, and they will be included in the photobook of the same title to be published by the Gibson/Goeun Museum of Photography in January 2024.

Viewers can see the Deja-Vu series, one of the three series in The Black Trilogy – which comprises Gibson’s major early works and has been displayed in the museum’s opening exhibition – in vintage gelatin silver prints in the exhibition hall on the first basement floor. The other two series in the trilogy, The Somnambulist and Days at Sea, are played in video at the entrance of the exhibition hall. We hope that viewers will be part of Gibson’s journey, enjoying his beautiful black-and-white pictures and feeling their special tones and rhythms. 

(Source = gibsongoeunmuseum)