www.elainelevyproject.com
Bethany Bristow's newest work consists of a series of large format color photographs created while she travelled across Asia. Ms. Bristow visited eight countries in two months, creating and photographing her temporal sculptural public installations along the way.
The installations were created using materials the artist transported from her studio in New York, which include feathers, corn syrup and sculptural elements made from melted glass bottles and jars,. Ms. Bristow completed each work in situ and photographed them with medium-format film before they were left to face the elements.
Bethany Bristow's installation practices follow in the tradition of psycho-geography which is described by Guy Debord as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals."
To quote the artist: "I specifically chose to do this project in Asia due to the current climate of rapid economic development layered on top of very old social and cultural structures. Each city I interacted with varied in degree of development as well as the age of this growth and concurrent environmental changes. This layering combined with the psycho-geographical impulse of my interventions, heightens the sense of mystery and tension felt in the images. Yet, my desire to create visual harmony and agreement coincided with local cultural and spiritual values. This unconsciously changed the intention of the work from being intellectual and subversive to being more ritualistic and giving."
Ms. Bristow's work becomes a kind of self-portraiture. The sculptural elements are "stand-ins" for the artist. They are her way of intensely connecting with a place foreign to her, melding with the environment and reconciling her status as an outsider.
The resulting photographs capture a fleeting moment in time and highlight the temporal nature of modern life in the ever-changing urban environment. The photographs themselves, while conceptual in nature, express a materiality that is edgy, glossy and lush. As the Asian landscapes photographed background, Bethany Bristow's shimmering new images are warm, colored and magnetic, and have a brand new and strong identity.
Bethany Bristow was born in 1970 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont (U.S.A.). She lives and works in New York. She graduated at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston where she earned a Fifth Year Certificate in 1994.
Bethany Bristow took part to numerous solo and group shows including Greater New York at the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, NY (2005), the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art (Ridgefield, CT, 2004), Decordova Annual Exhibition at Decordova Museum and Sculpture Park (Lincoln, MA, 1998). Her works are included the collections of the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park (Lincoln, MA), Rose Art Museum (Brandies University, Waltham, MA) and Simmons College (Boston, MA).
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