Milton Gendel

The subtle reinterpretation of art historical models in Gendel’s photographs can be compared to the pictorial sensibility informing Jeff Wall’s large-scale photographs. Another Gendel trademark, haunting investigations of the mysterious world of children, reveals affinities with the work of celebrated photographers such as Roger Ballen and Sally Mann. A long -term fascination with ancient statues wrapped in plastic prefigures the masked figures appearing in Thorsten Brinkmann’s spirited reinvention of grand manner portraiture. The perennial charm of Gendel’s photographs and the chance encounters they capture owes a great deal to this aller-retour between past and present. Imbued with a sly and loosely worn erudition and a deadpan sense of humor, Gendel’s images resist any attempt to classify them as dusty archival relics of a bygone age.

Submitted by Montoro12 Contemporary Art