NICOLE FIACCO GALLERY

The Nicole Fiacco Gallery is pleased to present a survey exhibition of selected works by renowned landscape photographer Karen Halverson (American b. 1941).  Selections were made from Halverson’s Downstream: Colorado River, Basin and Range and Trees series.

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Halverson’s large-format color photographs capture the ironies and anomalies of the postmodern American landscape with stunning clarity.  A 2002 review in The New Yorker, states that “Like Joel Sternfeld’s work, Halverson's exudes a quirky American romanticism”. By taking photographs of monumental Western landscapes in their natural state as well as turning her camera onto the strangeness of their altered state, Halverson creates a relevant and surprisingly beautiful ‘new landscape’.  

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A panoramic photograph of Death Valley, California shows a vast mountain range against a brilliant blue sky as carefully arranged folding chairs round in the foreground in every conceivable man-made color and material.  Hovering somewhere between hyperrealism and surrealism, Halverson’s photographs succeed not only in their compositions and vibrancy but significantly, in the narrative tension she creates in many of the images. 

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In 2008, a Karen Halverson monograph titled Downstream: Encounters with the Colorado River was published by the University of California Press.  Halverson received her B.A. from Stanford University and an M.A. from Brandeis University and an M.A. from Columbia University.  Halverson studied privately with Gary Winogrand and Joel Meyerowitz.  Halverson’s work has been exhibited extensively on the West Coast and in New York.  Her work is included in the permanent collections of many institutions including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, The Library of Congress, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Milwaukee Museum of Art, The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of the City of New York.  Karen Halverson’s work has been published in several books and has been on the cover of ARTnews and reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, L.A. Weekly and Newsweek, among others.