Abelardo Morell

(Havanna, Cuba, 1948 - )

North America, American, born Cuba

Abelardo Morell's photographs transform and transcend the ordinary and the everyday. Intrigued with optics and how an image is constructed, Morell’s diverse subject matters and approaches are united by the artist’s constant experimentation with optics and exploring new ways of constructing images. In one of his most enduring bodies of works, known as his camera obscura series, Morell reinvigorates some of the earliest discoveries in optics with a contemporary vision. His technique is straightforward yet wondrous: he transforms rooms into cameras by darkening the entire space except for one pinhole, which naturally creates an upside-down projection of the outside world onto the room’s back wall. Morell then photographs this combination of two worlds, outdoor and indoor, which often creates surreal, dream-like pastiches.  

Morell has also developed his signature approach for outdoor spaces in what is known as his tent-camera technique. Using the camera-obscura phenomenon, the artist uses a portable tent to project arresting views onto the earth beneath his feet. The resulting works reflect highly intentional marriages of the landscape with the materiality of the ground. Morell’s experimental approach not only engages with photography’s ancient history but also with modern painting. Inspired by the plein air practices of van Gogh and Monet, Morell made works in the same locations in France where those artists painted, not recreating their works but rather creating a new, radically modern vocabulary informed by art history. His photographs both suggest an appreciation for the specific places that shaped these artists and, surprisingly, the combination of views of landscapes with the texture of the ground in front of them yields a striking resemblance to the combination of depicted image and textured brushwork in paintings. 

Morell immigrated to New York from Cuba with his family when he was fourteen. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Bowdoin College in 1977 and a Master of Fine Arts from Yale University School of Art in 1981. Morell was awarded the Cintas Foundation fellowship in 1992 and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 1993. In 2013 his work was the subject of a major retrospective exhibition, The Universe Next Door, which started at the Art Institute of Chicago in June of 2013, toured to the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and ended at the High Museum in Atlanta in May of 2014. His work is in numerous private and public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Fondation Cartier, Paris; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Getty Museum, Los Angeles; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. 

 

 

http://www.abelardomorell.net/

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