Not Under The Tuscan Sun

PERIPHERAL Visions:
Italian PHOTOGRAHY
in Context
1950's - Present

Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery
Hunter College
1-4 pm Tuesday - Saturday
Until April 28, 2012

When you have gone to as many galleries and museum shows as I have, you think you've seen it all.  Thank God it's not true.  There is always something else to be uncovered.

Fortunately,  there are curators, gallery owners, graduate students, whose mission it is to discover unknown artists. This is the case of the current show at the Hunter College Gallery.  Peripheral Visions brings together 21 Italian photographers, who have looked at the landscape of their own country in non-pastoral way.  It's not the Italy of vacation snaps.  It's the underbelly of Italian cities and the seedy side of the rural environment.

If you are in the neighborhood, wonder into the gallery.  I guarantee you will not be disappointed.  It's not ALL extraordinary, but it's ALL worth looking at.

IN ADDITION
Matthew Pillsbury
City Sages
Bonni Benrubi Gallery
41 East 57 St.
Through April 28, 2012

Continue down Lexington Ave, make a right and walk toward Madison.  41 East 57 st., The Fuller Building, an art deco gem that has just been restored. Take the elevator to the 13th. floor.

Matthew Pillsbury uses a large-format camera and long time exposures to create amazing photographs.  If the work at Hunter College is of a landscape unfamiliar to the Italian tourist, Pillsbury's subject matter is the familiar to anyone who lives in NYC:  Macy's Day Thanksgiving Day Parade, Brooklyn Bridge Park Carousel (pictured above), the NY Stock Exchange, Times Square on New Year's Eve, the High Line, etc.  The contrast between the parts of the photo that are in focus and the part that is out of focus challenge our perception of the place. 

Take a stroll to either of one these shows (or both)  and alter your vision of what you think you know.