Frederick Sommer: Visual Affinities

FREDERICK SOMMER: VISUAL AFFINITIES
In collaboration with Bruce Silverstein

On view: October 24 – November 27, 2019
Opening reception: October 24, 6:00 – 8:00 pm

In the span of an extraordinary career, Frederick Sommer worked in a variety of media—encompassing drawing, painting, photography, collage, and writing. Although celebrated for his achievements in photography, the artist was interested in the broadest spectrum of creativity. It was this inquisitiveness and his understanding that “everything is shared by everything else; there are no discontinuities” that ultimately materialized in his works. Sommer engaged the world formally, harvested its chance gifts, decontextualized and recombined images and objects to highlight unlikely visual affinities. His exploration of the boundaries between representation and abstraction and his interest in a wide range of expressive mediums would inform his six-decade career. Visual Affinities, Ricco/Maresca’s second one-person Sommer exhibition in collaboration with Bruce Silverstein, presents a selection of work that reflects the variety of expression in the artist’s practice: from photography, ink on paper and “glue color” drawings (pigment suspended in hide glue), to his “musical score” works.