REFLECTING ALBA and REAR WINDOW featured in collective exhibition

curator statement, Julia Muggenburg

The utopia and dystopia of modern architecture makes us think about the realities of its creation, upheaval, confusion and disorder. This in mind, Belmacz new collective exhibition explores the cross-pollination of architectural possibilities; works and concepts from the last century to the present day. 

artist statement

“And since you know you cannot see yourself, so well as by reflection, I, your glass, will modestly discover to yourself, that of yourself which you yet know not of.” - W. Shakespeare

Images are reflections of reality in that they abstract, conceal and sometimes reveal intrinsic value or generate incidental phenomena.

As an architect, I understand the making of buildings and places as a process of conception, representation and realization.  As an architectural photographer, I understand that after conception, representation and realization, representation must be performed again, the essence of the work distilled and distributed to the culture at large by virtue of the image.

We are quintessentially a culture of images. Our personal understanding of places, buildings and cities is often achieved via the assimilation of received representation rather than by actual experience. 

Two subjects, of different scales, are juxtaposed in the work exhibited: the Barcelona Pavilion and my own New York City apartment.  

The first image, Reflecting Alba, captures George Kolbe’s sculpture at the reconstructed Barcelona Pavilion. The reflected female form is a second degree of abstraction and reveals the reactive reciprocity that exists between objects, adjacent elements and/or the space in which they reside.  

The second image, Rear Window, offers a glimpse into my private living space and at the objects that inhabit it.   

The photographs now are exhibited in the public space of the gallery.  Each independent image is at once a reflection of reality and an object inhabiting space. The work awaits reception by those susceptible to the reactive reciprocity that exists on multiple levels, within each image, between the seemingly unrelated views and between the framed photographs, as objects, and the space of the gallery.