For Immediate Release

Gregory Crewdson
May 11 - June 15, 2002

opening reception May 10, 2002





Luhring Augustine Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of twenty new photographs by Gregory Crewdson on view from May 11 to June 15, 2002. Crewdson continues his ongoing series of elaborately staged, large-scale color photographs that explore the psychological underside of the American vernacular. The photographs combine a realist aesthetic sensibility with a highly orchestrated interplay of cinematic lighting, staging, and special effects. This collision between the normal and the paranormal produces a tension that serves to transform the topology of the suburban landscape into a place of wonder and anxiety.

Crewdson's recent photographs are increasingly dark and mysterious in tone as they move deeper into the psychological bedrock of social alienation, personal obsession, and sexual desire. Crewdson's narratives occur at moments of enigmatic transformation. Submerged in water, a lifeless woman stares blankly upwards, as she lies in a flooded living room. Sitting at a diner room table with his father and sister, an adolescent boy witnesses his absent mother appear nude at the front door, wet with rain and mud, carrying uprooted flowers from the garden. Framed by a picture window, a lone man is viewed ascending a magnificent flowering vine that has mysteriously erupted from the front lawn of a nocturnal suburban street. Crewdson's brand of psychological realism is shaped by an American aesthetic tradition of art and film that explores the intersection of everyday life and theatricality.

In conjunction with this exhibition, Harry N. Abrams will publish a hardcover book of the complete Twilight series with an introduction by Rick Moody, due to be available in bookstores this May. There will be a lecture and book launch at the New School Auditorium presented by the Public Art Fund on May 23, 2002 at 6:30pm. For more information go to: www.publicartfund.org.

Gregory Crewdson is an internationally exhibited artist. He is the subject of numerous monographs and articles. He is on the faculty of the Department of Photography at Yale University and lives in New York City. This will be his fourth exhibition at Luhring Augustine Gallery.

If you would like to receive further information regarding this exhibition please contact Natalia Mager at (212) 206-9100 or natalia@luhringaugustine.com.