USC FISHER MUSEUM OF ART
VICTOR RAPHAEL: TRAVELS AND WANDERINGS 1979 - 2009
September 9 – December 19, 2009
823 Exposition Boulevard
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0292
This exhibition featured work from the last 30 years and included paintings, Polaroids, video, and interactive technologies. Work from the ongoing Space Field series will be included as well as work from Japan, Paris, Turkey, Mexico and Alaska. The exhibit will also feature work from several collaborations between Raphael and other artists.
Museum Entrance: Space Field Series photo by Eric Poppleton
Victor Raphael (born 1950) works in a wide range of media spanning painting, photography, filmmaking, printmaking, and digital technology. He creates complex and beautiful images that expand conventional views of time and space. For the past three decades, Raphael has produced a unique body of work by merging traditional media such as painting, photography and printmaking with modern electronic media, including video, digital printing and interactive technologies. In addition to his central themes of the exploration of the cosmos and aspects of travel—through space or time—and their visual records, the artist has developed an important body of paintings, in which water, for instance, and its protean and timeless qualities, form an important part. His photography process of digitally manipulating NASA photographs of planets and other natural celestial phenomena into Polaroid prints, and next altering them by hand with metallic paints and gold and metal leaf, earned his work to be selected in 1996 as among the 50 best examples of Polaroid photography included in Polaroid 50: Art and Technology, an international touring exhibition commemorating the company's fiftieth anniversary.
Essays:
Travels and Wanderings: Victor Raphael by Selma Holo
Victor Raphael: Travels and Wanderings, 1979 - 2009 by Ariadni A. Liokatis
The Room by Selma Holo with contributions by Nancy Berman, Ruth Weinberg, Lewis Barth, and Ruth Adar
West Gallery: Collaborations, Jewish Themes, UFO Series, '80s Polaroids, Alaska Series photo by Eric Poppleton
East Gallery: Martha's Vineyard, Getty Polaroids, Gold Paintings, Pollock Series, Getty Water Paintings photo by Eric Poppleton
East Gallery: Floating World Series (Japan) photo by Eric Poppleton