Janos Gat Gallery and Ubu Gallery present in collaboration exhibitions of two exceptional bodies of works by Théodore Brauner. A series of "photographic anthropomorphisms" are being exhibited for the first time ever ("The Masks" at Janos Gat Gallery) and "photographic paintings" are being exhibited for the first time since they were last seen in 1952 in Jerusalem ("Solarfixes" at Ubu Gallery, 16 East 78th Street).
"The Masks" is a series of photographs of found anthropomorphisms. Brauner’s playful sensibility and curiosity enhanced a natural "framing" instinct that sought out the humanity in things and helped him encounter echoes of the human visage in the everyday landscape. A genie appears in the gears of a giant industrial machine; an authoritarian idol in the face of a short-wave radio; and an imp in a corkscrew. Sometimes the resemblance of an inanimate object or correlation of objects to a face is inherent, but more than often, it results from subtle framing. The more ingenious the framing, the more Brauner’s quest for the anthropomorphic takes on a spiritual quality – proving that man’s creations bear his likeness in endless variation.
"Solarfixes" are abstract photographs of painterly beauty made without camera or darkroom, with color added through unknown chemical recipes and processes. Brauner worked toward his radical method gradually: "First a very personal preparation of negatives over sheets of paper of different transparencies, then interference through the intermediary materials causing mutations among them." Finally, Brauner broke away completely: I expose light sensitive paper directly to sunlight, fully contradicting all existing and accepted methods." Sometimes the methods or the objects employed by Brauner can be guessed at, but the details of their making seem unimportant. Brauner viewed them as pure painting with light and, because he refused to exhibit them in galleries devoted exclusively to photography, they were shown only once in the Beth Haomanim in Jerusalem in 1952.
