New York, NY (February 1, 2012) – High Line Art, presented by Friends of the High Line, today unveiled Developing Tray #2, created by Anne Collier for the 25-by-75 foot billboard next to the High Line at West 18th Street and 10th Avenue. This is the second work to be presented as part of HIGH LIN... Read more
New York, NY (February 1, 2012) – High Line Art, presented by Friends of the High Line, today unveiled Developing Tray #2, created by Anne Collier for the 25-by-75 foot billboard next to the High Line at West 18th Street and 10th Avenue. This is the second work to be presented as part of HIGH LINEBILLBOARD, a new series of art installations made possible thanks to the generous support of Edison Properties, the owner of the property on which the billboard stands. The artwork will remain on view through Wednesday, February 29, 2012. The new billboard follows the iconic and much celebrated presentation of John Baldessari’s The First $100,000 I Ever Made, a gigantic reproduction of a $100,000 bill that dominated the skyline in Chelsea during the month of December.
Anne Collier is known for a series of works in which she explores the mysterious connections that tie photography, identity, and media. The artist engages her audience through enigmatic visual content, often appropriated from popular culture, fashion magazines, and vintage images of the 1970s and 1980s. Her work establishes a tension between what an image looks like and what it is suggesting. Often incorporating pictures of celebrities, pop stars, and icons of fashion, Collier’s images analyze the photographic process, showing the tools that allow us to create pictures and exposing the mechanics by which the image-making industry manipulates and constructs desires.
For HIGH LINE BILLBOARD, Anne Collier presents Developing Tray #2, a photograph she took in 2009 and is revisiting now for the larger-than-life billboard format. The image depicts a developing tray containing a print of a wide-open eye – the artist’s eye – submerged in photographic developing fluid. Enlarged to gigantic dimensions and floating amidst a vast, intense black space on HIGH LINE BILLBOARD, the eye will stare back at the viewer, establishing a confrontational dialogue with passers-by.
Exploring the mechanics of the gaze with a sensual, at times voyeuristic approach, the artist creates pictures that trap the viewer in an inescapable movement between the act of looking and being looked at, between private and public space. “I like this visual tautology, where the final image partly describes the process of its making,” the artist once said.
“The billboard is the communication medium par excellence,” said Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Curator and Director of High Line Art at Friends of the High Line. “The work of Anne Collier is the perfect example of art’s endless possibilities to occupy and reinvent spaces that are usually devoted to commercial messages. I like the slightly paranoid tone of this piece: Big Brother is watching you. Or, maybe we should say, Big Sister is staring at us and she is being stared back by the viewers.”
A b o u t t h e A r t i s t
Anne Collier was born in Los Angeles, California in 1970, and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the California Institute of Arts, and a Master of Fine Arts from UCLA. Collier’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham UK; ArtPace, San Antonio, TX; Bonner Kunsverein, Bonn, DE; and Presentation House, Vancouver, BC. Her work has been exhibited at international venues such as Guggenheim, Bilbao, ES; Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow, RU; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, FR, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, UK. She has also been included in the 2010 Gwangju Biennale, 2006 Whitney Biennial, and Greater New York at PS1 in 2005. Anne Collier lives and works in New York City
