Views of the Coast- Photography by David Batchelder and Yve Assad
January 7, 2013
January 19 – March 3
An Exhibition at the City Gallery at Waterfront Park
CHARLESTON, SC – The City of Charleston Office of Cultural Affairs presents Defining Focus: Views of the Coast – a show of works by photographers David Batchelder and Yve Assad curated by Charles Wyrick. This exhibit will be displayed at the City Gallery at Waterfront Park from January 19, 2013 until March 3, 2013. The opening reception is from 5pm until 7pm on Saturday, January 19, 2013. Assad will host a lecture at the gallery January 20th at 3 p.m.; Batchelder will host a lecture at the gallery February 23rd at 3 p.m. Admission is free and the public is invited.
Defining Focus combines the aerial photography of Yve Assad and the macro photography of David Batchelder to examine the South Carolina Lowcountry shoreline. These images show a world that is both familiar and otherworldly. Assad and Batchelder are able to capture the flow, light, and texture of the shore in each of their photographs, offering unique and engaging vantage points. Both are able to challenge the eye by creating pieces that demand interpretation. The viewer is presented with familiar scenes but prompted to see them with a fresh perspective.
Batchelder’s beach photographs could be haunting images from the Mars rover or early Zen paintings; his pictures range from extremely detailed to almost painterly in their abstractness. From the air, Assad is also able to capture images that are at once identifiable yet inscrutable; the detail and scale of her pictures asks the viewer to imagine what section of the Lowcountry she has visited, or if it is, in fact, the Lowcountry at all – perhaps it is some alien vista instead. Together, Batchelder and Assad present our natural surroundings both as the focus of their work, a creator and product of mesmerizing beauty.
Untitled by Yve Assad
About the Artist – David Batchelder, a former college professor and school principal, was exhibited and published as a serious young contemporary photographer in the 1960’s and 70’s. He was featured in group shows at the George Eastman House, M.I.T., the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He exhibited one-man shows at Bowdoin College, the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts, and the Exposure Gallery, in New York City. He has been published in Aperture Magazine, Vol 14:1, 1969, and Vol 15:3, 1970. His work can be found in the public collections of the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Fogg Museum at Harvard, the George Eastman House, M.I.T., Smith College; Bowdoin College, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the Museum of Fine Art in Boston and in Houston. Batchelder stopped taking photographs for a long time, but recently started making images again—digital this time—on a small section of beach near his home on the Isle of Palms. The Batchelder Beach Photographs have revealed an original, unanticipated visual world that could not have been preconceived. He says of his own work: Each day I go out on the ever-changing beach to photograph, I find intriguing visual images. This process of visual discovery has taken on a force of its own with no apparent end of creative and original images in sight.
About the Artist – Yve Assad is a photographer based out of Nashville, Tennessee. She studied Photojournalism at the University of Georgia and for the last decade has been commissioned to do artwork for commercial buildings in the Southeast, representing their local and regional communities, cultures and environment. She also does a lot of photography for the motorcycle industry shooting for clients such as Triumph, Harley-Davidson, Kawasaki and several international publications. She is an avid traveler and, whenever possible, heads to a different country to capture life in other cultures. Yve has been shooting aerial photography of the South Carolina Lowcountry over the last 5 years and continues to return to the area to build her collection. Her notable shows include a solo exhibit featuring photos from Northern India at the Art Institute of Charleston in February 2010 and 2 Aerial photos of the South Carolina Lowcountry at the Emerging Artists Show at the Studio Gallery in Washington DC in May 2010. She says of her own work: With these photos I wanted to show the flow from one ecosystem to another, where land meets water, and how seamless nature makes it look. For the majority of us, we rarely get to see the earth from above, unless it is a quick glimpse aboard a commercial airliner climbing to 20,000 feet. My desire is to show the patterns of nature, along with some of the things man makes from a perspective one does not typically see. It can be educational and beautiful.
The City Gallery at Waterfront Park, owned by the City of Charleston and operated by the City of Charleston Office of Cultural Affairs, is a tangible resource and reliable venue for displaying the finest contemporary art from local, regional, national and international artists, stimulating discussion and dialogue among audiences. In the process, those who visit the City Gallery at Waterfront Park will be educated, enlightened and inspired by their experiences in this cultural space. The City Gallery provides access to the visual arts for everyone in Charleston, S.C., visitors and residents alike, by offering exhibits that are all admission-free. The City Gallery is located at 34 Prioleau St. in downtown Charleston, S.C., and gallery hours of operation are Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. For more information visit www.citygalleryatwaterfrontpark.com.
