Toronto specializing in contemporary photography
 

Embedded

Embedded

Donald Weber + Dima Gavrysh

April 10 – May 3, 2014
Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA
401 Richmond Street West, Suite 124
Toronto, ON, M5V 3A8

Reception: Thursday, April 10, 6-9 p.m.
Artist’s Talk + Discussion (moderated by Sara Matthews): Saturday, April 12 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.


Circuit Gallery presents Embedded, a two-person exhibition featuring work by Canadian photographer Donald Weber, from his new project War Sand, and Ukrainian born, U.S. based photographer Dima Gavrysh, from his award winning project Inshallah. The exhibition is curated by Claire Sykes with a catalogue essay by Sara Matthews.

As Canada’s troops leave Afghanistan and we prepare to mark the centenary of the First World War, Embedded offers a timely look at war and the extents to which we can experience it through photography.

In War Sand, Donald Weber looks closely at the beaches of the Normandy coast, the sites of the Allied invasion of German-occupied France in 1944. His work asks questions about history and geology, and about sacrifice, memory and time. In a departure from his previous powerful pictures of people, Weber offers a series of beautiful and moody land and seascapes. These are complemented by micrographic images of sand collected from those beaches that reveal the traces of war: embedded in the beaches there remain vast quantities of shrapnel and other war debris.

Dima Gavrysh was embedded as a photojournalist with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan in 2009 and 2011. In the course of his work he moved progressively away from the kind of direct reportage he was expected to provide, toward taking a different kind of picture with the project evolving into a personal catharsis for which this war became a background. His powerful series, Inshallah, offers us a more emotional and embodied impression of that experience—one that seeks to convey the pervasive unease, confusion and frustration he witnessed there.

Embedded runs April 10 through May 3 at Circuit Gallery @ Prefix ICA with an Opening Reception on Thursday, April 10, from 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. (artists in attendance) and an Artist’s Talk + Discussion (moderated by Sara Matthews) on Saturday, April 12, 1 to 2:00 p.m.


Artist Bios

 

Donald Weber

Donald Weber is a photographer fascinated by the subject of power (be it economic, political, or psychological) and how it deploys an all-encompassing theatre for its subjects.

His Interrogations project and accompanying book (Schilt, 2011) has received notable recognition and accolades from World Press Photo, PDN, Aperture, and many others. It was preceded by Bastard Eden, Our Chernobyl (2008) which won the Photolucida Book Award.

Weber’s numerous awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Duke and Duchess of York Photography Prize, and two World Press Photo prizes. Most recently he was shortlisted for the 2014 Scotiabank Photography Award. He is a member of the acclaimed VII Photo agency.

Artist page: Donald Weber

Dima Gavrysh

Dima Gavrysh is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Portland, Oregon. He received his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2012 after studying photography and motion picture imaging in Kyiv, Ukraine. Gavrysh has worked as a documentary photographer in 1998 – 2010 with major publications and news agencies such as Associated Press, Bloomberg News, and Agence France-Presse. He has also worked on multiple projects around the globe, including collaborations with Doctors Without Borders and the United Nations Population Fund, and numerous embeds with the US Army in Afghanistan. His work has appeared in a variety of international publications, including The New York Times, Stern, Paris Match, Time and was exhibited both, in the US and internationally.

Over the past four years Dima has been exploring the American war in Afghanistan through video installation, photography, appropriated imagery and data visualization.

His first book Inshallah was published by Kehrer Verlag (Germany) in 2015.

Artist page: Dima Gavrysh


Works Exhibited

 

Donald Weber: War Sand

 


Dima Gavrysh: Inshallah