Raїssa Venables (born 1977) is an American photographer.
Background and education
Venables was born in 1977 in
New Paltz
New Paltz () is an incorporated U.S. town in Ulster County, New York. The population was 14,003 at the 2010 U.S. Census. The town is located in the southeastern part of the county and is south of Kingston. New Paltz contains a village, also with ...
,
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, concentrating on the Anatomy for Life Drawing. In 1999 she received a BFA in Photography and Ceramic Sculpture from the
Kansas City Art Institute
The Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI) is a private art school in Kansas City, Missouri. The college was founded in 1885 and is an accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design and Higher Learning Commission. It has approxi ...
. She received a master's degree in photography at the Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts at
Bard College
Bard College is a private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, and is within the Hudson River Historic ...
Venables' photographs deal with planar relationship, passage of time, motion, and perceptual fields, blurring the realm of the real world with the imagined one.
Venables is influenced by Early Renaissance Flemish painters like
Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck ( , ; – July 9, 1441) was a painter active in Bruges who was one of the early innovators of what became known as Early Netherlandish painting, and one of the most significant representatives of Early Northern Renaissance art. Ac ...
,
Rogier van der Weyden
Rogier van der Weyden () or Roger de la Pasture (1399 or 140018 June 1464) was an early Netherlandish painter whose surviving works consist mainly of religious triptychs, altarpieces, and commissioned single and diptych portraits. He was highly ...
and
Robert Campin
Robert Campin (c. 1375 – 26 April 1444), now usually identified with the Master of Flémalle (earlier the Master of the Merode Triptych, before the discovery of three other similar panels), was the first great master of Early Netherlandish paint ...
, particularly with their usage of colour and lighting. Venables' work is also influenced by the neo-cubistic approach to splitting and dissolving an object or space before reassembling them together. Curators make the comparison of Venables’ work with thematic perspective found in
Medieval art
The medieval art of the Western world covers a vast scope of time and place, over 1000 years of art in Europe, and at certain periods in Western Asia and Northern Africa. It includes major art movements and periods, national and regional art, gen ...
, in which objects are arranged in accordance to their spiritual values as opposed to their natural ones.
Matthias Harder, director of the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin, wrote about the artist’s reason for taking this approach: “Venables’ real intention is to open up unfamiliar perspectives and to transform real spaces into imaginary ones with realistic traits.”
Publications
Solo exhibition catalogues
* ''Raïssa Venables.'' Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany:
Hatje Cantz
Hatje Cantz Verlag (English: Hatje Cantz Publishing) is a German book publisher specialising in photography, art, architecture and design. It was established in 1945 by Gerd HatjeNils Ohlsen. ''Realismus: das Abenteuer der Wirklichkeit'' = Realism: the adventure of reality. Munich: Hirmer, 2010. . "Catalog of an exhibition held at the Kunsthalle Emden, January 23-May 24, 2010, and Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich, June 11-September 5, 2010."
* ''Real: Photographs from the Collection of the DZ Bank.'' Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2010. Edited by Luminita Sabau. . With contributions by Walter Grasskamp, Sabau, Martin Seel, et al.. German and English. Exhibition catalogue.
Jersey City Museum
The Jersey City Museum was a municipal art museum in Jersey City, New Jersey. The establishment opened in 1901 and was housed in the main branch of the Jersey City Public Library. It relocated to a new building in 2001, but due to financial dif ...
Venables' work is held in the following permanent public collections:
*, Emden, Germany
*
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art museum in Kansas City, Missouri, known for its encyclopedic collection of art from nearly every continent and culture, and especially for its extensive collection of Asian art.
In 2007, ''Time'' magaz ...
, Kansas City, Missouri (Hall Family Foundation gift): 1 print, "Cupola" (2005)
* Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art, New Mexico: 1 print, "Yellow Steps" (2007)