Wessel + O'Connor Fine Art is pleased to announce its inaugural
event in its new location in Lambertville, NJ. The opening exhibition
of recent work by DAVID HALLIDAY continues the gallery's soon-to-be
25 year history of presenting contemporary art and photography in
intimate, new settings. Following earlier venues in settings as
diverse as Rome, Soho, Chelsea, and Dumbo, Wessel + O'Connor is
proud to join the burgeoning contemporary art scene now emerging
in this classic Delaware River town.
Lambertville, long associated with serious culinary endeavors, makes
for an appropriate setting for Halliday's newest color photographs
featuring compositions of food and related floral still lifes. In
the early 1990's, David Halliday moved to New Orleans to take a
job as a chef, but his keen eye for formal relationships steered
him in a different direction. Since 1992, he has been exhibiting
his photographs of people, places, and things.
Halliday’s early photographs are in a traditional format,
mostly sepia-toned gelatin silver prints that are developed by the
artist in his darkroom. More recently, he has been exploring color
photography using digital technology to fine-tune each image. Although
Halliday has produced many landscapes and portrait photos, this
exhibition focuses on his still life compositions using food, an
appropriate subject for an artist who began his career as a chef.
Halliday’s photographs of food imagery reveal his penchant
for exotic subjects and his fondness for staging a composition to
resemble art historical prototypes. The artist’s Box Series,
a project begun in 2000, reveals his approach to creating a body
of work according to a systematic process. The recent color photographs
are also evocative in their art historical associations or metaphoric
overtones. Compositions are still organized as the old masters might
have painted them, with many of the objects taking on anthropomorphic
qualities.
In 2009 Halliday had a major retrospective of his work at the San
Antonio Museum of Art, after one at the Contemporary Arts Center
in New Orleans in 2002. His works are included in the collections
of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of
Art as well as many private collections. This will be his third
solo exhibition with the Gallery.
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+ View full exhibit
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