The Department of Art & Art History is pleased to present Ghostpile on view from November 4 to December 14, 2008, with an opening reception on November 6, from 4:30-7 PM, and a closing reception on December 6, from 3-5 PM at the Thomas Welton Stanford Art Gallery.
Ghostpile features Lukas Felzmann's photographic work, an exploration of the Sacramento Valley as both place and metaphor, documents a marsh altered through agriculture. In this collection, images and ideas about landscape and natural and cultural conditions intersect. The waters photographed are in the middle of the journey from the sky to the sea. They have left the steep watersheds, but have not yet reached the delta. Flowing south between the Coast Ranges and the Sierra Nevada, their paths have been contained in the mud channels and concrete canals.
Felzmann's intention was not to produce an inclusive documentation, but to construct an empirical archive and to weave a story out of fragments - a sort of poetry of ruins. "Transitory zones have been important in this collection because they reveal something about the essence of place, but can also point outside themselves," says Felzmann.
Born and educated in Zurich, Switzerland, Lukas Felzmann received his M.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute. He has taught photography at the California College of the Arts, San Francisco Art Institute, and Stanford University since 1993. His second monograph: Waters in Between, published by Lars M?ller Publishers in September 2008 containing this work is subtitled An archive of a marsh with marginalia by Angelus Silesius and John Berger.
VISITOR INFORMATION: Thomas Welton Stanford Art Gallery is open Tuesday through Friday, 10 AM?5 PM, and Saturday and Sunday, 1-5 PM. It will be closed on on November 25-28.
Admission is free. The Gallery is located in the Stanford campus, off Palm Drive at 419 Lasuen Mall. Parking is free after 4 PM and all day on weekends. Information: (650) 723-2842, website.