David Maisel
The Fall (Borox 8), 2013

Archival pigment print, 29 x 29 inches
Edition 2/6 + 2AP, signed, on label
Framed
Courtesy of the artist and Haines Gallery, San Francisco
Estimated value: $12,000

David Maisel’s carefully constructed, reality-based photographs chronicle the complex relationships between natural systems and human intervention. His investigative process and project-based practice illuminate the notion of place—through observation of natural phenomenon, the effects of the built environment, and what is revealed by societal detritus. His predominantly large-scaled photographs have demonstrated the physical transformation of the landscape caused by industrial efforts. Maisel’s aerial images of these sites are abstract, graphic, and often painterly—giving detailed but open-ended information and operating on a metaphorical level as much as a documentary one.

In the fall of 2013, Maisel was commissioned to photograph the city of Toledo, Spain, for ToledoContemporánea, an exhibition commemorating the 400th anniversary of the death of the painter El Greco. After completing the Toledo works, Maisel set to work on The Fall, depicting landscapes between Toledo and Madrid that have been affected by industrial use, rapid development, and financial crisis. From the silvery extraction zones in Borox and the crosshatched fields in Fuensalida to the abandoned residential construction sites in Vicalvaro, Maisel’s powerful series conveys a sense of striking beauty and its inevitable decay. With their intersecting planes and muted palettes, Maisel’s painterly abstractions may suggest the alien, cubist landscapes of Picasso and Braque, if suggestive of landscapes at all. As Maisel explains, the making of this work was imbued with a sense of “the moment in one’s life when things begin to fall away.” It is ultimately toward this moment—writ large—that the exhibition and its title will point viewers as they fluctuate between visual pleasure and unease.

About the Artist:
David Maisel

Maisel’s photographs, multi-media projects, and public installations have recently been exhibited at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA; Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA; Denver Art Museum, CO; Nevada Art Museum, Reno, NV; Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China; ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea; and National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. His works are included in many public collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, MN; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX. Maisel was a scholar in residence at the Getty Research Institute, and artist in residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Marin, CA. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018, as well as an Individual Artist’s grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (1990) and Investing in Artists grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation, (2011). His work has been the subject of seven monographs: The Lake Project (Nazraeli Press, 2004), Oblivion (Nazraeli Press, 2006), Library of Dust (Chronicle Books, 2008), History’s Shadow (Nazraeli Press, 2011), Black Maps (Steidl, 2013), Mount St. Helens: Afterlife (Ivorypress, 2018), and Proving Ground (Radius Books and the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art/Utah State University, 2020).

Website: davidmaisel.com | hainesgallery.com
Instagram: @davidmaiselstudio | @hainesgallery