WILLIAM CHRISTENBERRY @ Pace/MacGill Gallery

WILLIAM CHRISTENBERRY: Summer | Winter
November 3, 2016 — January 21, 2017

Opening reception: Thursday, November 3, 5:30–7:30 PM

During pilgrimages to his native Hale County, Alabama, William Christenberry has recorded the changing appearance of the region’s natural landscape and vernacular architecture in diverse formats and media since the early 1960s. His color photographs of rusted signage, winding dirt roads, and the weathered exteriors of humble structures present, with deceiving formal simplicity, prolonged studies of place that chronicle the passage of time in the rural South. Christenberry’s most frequent subjects, such as Coleman’s Cafe, Sprott Church, and the Palmist Building — often photographed straight-on and near the center of the frame — assume an iconic quality within his oeuvre as monuments of a disappearing past.

While many of Christenberry’s images depict foliage and edifices in summer months, the works on view offer a unique opportunity to simultaneously study these same sites from a winter perspective. Verdant vegetation and overgrown kudzu become bare branches and bramble, and skies shift from blue to grey with the seasonal fluctuations in light. Viewed collectively, the pairs of photographs are not just records of the evolving identities of Southern buildings and terrains at varying times of year, but also meditations on the universal experience of stasis and change.

Pace/MacGill Gallery
32 East 57th Street, 9th Floor

Originally published at F-Stop Magazine.