Volumes

Mary Ellen Bartley

Mary Ellen Bartley is known for photographs that explore the tactile and formal qualities of the printed book and its potential for abstraction. In her poetic, minimalist images the books’ contents are often hidden or only partially revealed, and this underscores the tension between narrative and purely formal concerns.

Bartley has realized projects in the private libraries of artists such as Robert Wilson, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, and Giorgio Morandi.

The exhibition ‘Volumes’ explores the multiple meanings of its title, be it the printed volumes of books, the quiet volume of colour palettes, or the geometric volumes of certain compositions. It even includes a photo of Jackson Pollock’s damaged collection of jazz records.

Mary Ellen Bartley was born in New York in 1959.