Olivo Barbieri / Site Specific / New York

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Olivo Barbieri
site specific_NEW YORK CITY 07
April 15 – May 28, 2010
Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10 – 6
Yancey Richardson Gallery is pleased to present site
specific_NEW YORK CITY 07, an exhibition by Italian
photographer Olivo Barbieri. Since 2004, Barbieri has been
developing a series of large-scale aerial photographs on
major sites in Rome, Las Vegas, Shanghai, Montreal, Los
Angeles, Amman, Florence, Milan, and New York. Utilizing
a large format camera with a tilt and shift lens, Barbieri
deftly renders the grand scale of these major metropolises
to mere models of themselves. His bird’s eye perspectives
on some of mankind’s greatest architectural achievements
have a mesmerizing quality, simultaneously evocative of our
infinitesimal size as individuals yet illuminating of the majesty of our civilization’s progress as a whole.
As Barbieri states: “[I see] the world as a temporary site-specific installation, structures,infrastructures, the foundation of our sense of belonging and our identity, seen from afar, as a great scale model: the city as an avatar of itself.”
New York’s contemporary urban landscape is the charismatic and diverse subject of Barbieri’s site specific_NEW YORK CITY 07 exhibition. From Barbieri’s vantage, sunbathers at Central Park’s Sheep’s Meadow become a collection of color field swaths, flowers dotting the great green lawn. The landmark Flat Iron Building reveals its iconic wedge shape, nestled on its own island splitting Broadway and 5th Avenue. The historic Wonder Wheel and its surrounding carnival games at Coney Island are a jumble of circles and curlicues, colorful forms barely resembling the famous boardwalk amusement park.