This event has passed.

Art

Anna Shteynshleyger

  • Anna-_pears_calculator__large

Renaissance Society says:

The Renaissance Society mounts a solo exhibition of photographs by Chicago-based artist Anna Shteynshleyger (b. 1977). Trained at Yale, Shteynshleyger belongs to a generation of photographers whose work is notable for its formal beauty and technical execution. The exhibition features approximately 18 works that poignantly document Shteynshleyger's life over the past several years. During that period, Shteynshleyger has had to renegotiate her relationship with Orthodox Judaism, which she had practiced since the age of 16, after moving to the United States from Moscow, where she was born. Too personal to qualify as documentary of the Orthodox Jewish community, Shteynshleyger's work spans a variety of genres — portraits, still-life, landscape, and interiors — all of which are included in the exhibition. The portraits and interiors display a sensitivity that is as questioning as it is knowing of its subjects.

Venue_writeup_open_quotes

Moscow-born, Yale-trained artist Anna Shteynshleyger's austere images belie a host of influences. Her large, arresting photographs of the Siberian countryside are both sweepingly beautiful and strange, referencing the history of landscape painting as well as Andrei Tarkovsky's avant-garde films. Another series is a fascinating study of people on escalators, their faces alternately fixed upward as they ride to the top, or blank as they stare forward — metaphorically loaded to be sure. This exhibition of about 20 recent works is a departure of sorts for Shteynshleyger, but no less ambitious and diverse: a series that mines personal territory in an exploration of the artist's relationship with Orthodox Judaism, and combines her talent for portraiture with a range of landscapes and still-lifes.

Venue_writeup_close_quotes - Audrey Mast
350 Characters Remaining
Join