The photographs in Mary Ellen Bartley’s series Morandi’s Books – meditative still life compositions in muted colors transformed by collage elements – are gently disorienting despite their formal precision. Their palette and compositional restraint, not to mention their understated geometry, are clear homages to the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi. When the pandemic hit, Bartley was in the midst of a residency at his studio and library in Bologna, Italy, photographing his books. The pandemic cut the residency short, but she began working in her Sag Harbor studio on a series of still lifes and collage works in which she combined her original photographs with vellum, pieces of cut-out paper, or aged glassine typical of the papers that covered many of Morandi’s books. These elements disrupt the visual plane and sense of spatial depth in the pictures, adding a beguiling layer of complexity, visually and figuratively. Bartley’s photographs of the tattered and well-read volumes, many of them on other artists, that informed Morandi’s thinking and his work, make them feel like sacred relics. Morandi’s Books was on view at Yancey Richardson Gallery from October to December and will be on view at the Drawing Room in East Hampton, N.Y., from January 13 to March 12, 2023.
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