Wild Nights Installation
MICHAEL FLOMEN
Wild Nights
MICHAEL FLOMEN: Wild Nights
Boîte Noire Gallery is pleased to present the solo exhibition of Michael Flomen’s photography. A pioneer in his field, Flomen makes some of the largest photograms in the world today. These large scale photographs will be presented for the first time in Los Angeles during the gallery’s inaugural exhibition, Wild Nights.
Michael Flomen has been experimenting with photography since the late 1960s. For two decades, Flomen worked in the decisive moment style of street photography practiced by Cartier-Bresson and Gary Winogrand, among others. By the early 1990s he had begun to use large format cameras to photograph the landscape, particularly the rural snow fields and urban snow depositories of his native Montreal. In 1999, Flomen started using camera-less techniques, collaborating directly with nature to create photograms outdoors in the countryside.
“I make photographs of things we do not see but know are there.”
Working with all four seasons, Flomen exposes photographic paper and large format film to various light sources, including the moon, fireflies, and a handheld flash. Natural elements such as snow, rain, water, and wind comprise his materials. Included in this exhibition are three large scale color photographs made by tracking the light pattern of fireflies in the grass at the artist's family farm in Vermont.
In addition to these works, the exhibition will also feature two films. Gaze (2013) is a short black and white video wherein the artist tests the poetic limits of the medium and continues to reflect on our relationship with nature. Gaze will be shown at the Festival International d’art Video in Casablanca, Morocco in April 2014. Under the Cover of Darkness (2008), shot in infrared and produced by André Cornellier, is a documentary film that reveals Flomen’s artistic process. It premiered at the International Festival of Films on Art in Montreal (2009).