Buck Ellison at Weiss Berlin

Artist: Buck Ellison

Exhibition title: Modesty

Venue: Weiss Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Date: June 10 – July 2, 2016

Photography: Linus Dessecker, all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Weiss Berlin

We are proud to present Modesty, Buck Ellison’s first solo exhibition in Berlin. A velvety leaved cabbage, soft skin, reflective car finish: in Ellison’s photographs, smooth surfaces appear in all sorts of different modes. The portraits of plants, shot in organic gardens of Californian private schools, may come off as idyllic, but at the same time they appear overly sterile. The same, almost disturbingly artificial character also inhabits the representations of people, casting doubt on the authenticity of poses and groupings that look a little too normal. Evoking a slightly oppressive feeling in the viewer these seem reminiscent of ubiquitous advertising images in public spaces culled from stock photography. A series of still lifes, showing the offerings of fish counters at Berlin’s Kaufhaus des Westens, references not only to the increasing aestheticization of food through advertising and amateur photography, but also the aspiration to a better life through a healthy, supposedly responsible diet. The pastel-colored animals from diverse freshwater and saltwater waters or from breeding ponds, often previously frozen and thawed due to long transport routes, are here presented nicely for the buyer, side by side.

Buck Ellison (*1987) lives and works in Los Angeles. He graduated from a master class at the Städelschule, Frankfurt in 2014 and received a B.A. from Columbia University, New York in 2010. His work has been shown at Mathew Gallery, New York; Park View, Los Angeles; Galerie Balice Hertling, New York, and at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles.

Modesty is the third exhibition at Weiss Berlin. The gallery shows contemporary art, predominantly by artists living and working in Los Angeles and New York. Among the artists shown by the the gallery are Elif Erkan, Alex Becerra, Buck Ellison, Rosha Yaghmai, Keith Mayerson, Evan Nesbit, and Celeste Dupuy-Spencer.