Chromatic Fiction, Mary Ellen Bartley’s painterly and abstract treatment of another vessel of narrative possibility, the printed book, will be on view at the gallery for the first time. Curated from four of the photographer’s celebrated series — Reading in Color, Reading Grey Gardens, Reading November, and the brand new Split Stacks — the exhibition invites viewers to consider the quiet beauty of the material form that houses innumerable stories and ideas. Some works are more purely formal (Reading in Color, Split Stacks, Reading November), sculptural studies of candy-colored and worn paperbacks or moody and mysterious hardcovers reminiscent of Renaissance oils. Other series — like Morandi’s Books, on view concurrently at the Museo Morandi, Bologna, Italy, or Reading Grey Gardens mine the intimate libraries of real people that fascinate or inspire Bartley for clues about their owners’ secret lives. Like Halaban’s window scenes, Bartley’s photographs of the books left behind by Jacqueline Kennedy cousins “Big” and “Little” Edie Bouvier Beale invite viewers to weave together their own narratives about the volumes’ storied histories.
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