Information
Willie Doherty
Jan 13 – Feb 17, 1996
Willie Doherty will exhibit recent photographs and No Smoke Without Fire, a video installation. This exhibition, presented by Alexander and Bonin, will be Doherty's first New York gallery show since 1992.
Doherty is known for haunting large scale photographs which juxtapose stark and violent subjects with a lush cibachrome technique. The photographs, mounted on aluminum, are hung at specific heights which position the viewer to 'enter' them.
The video installation, Doherty's third, was orginally shown in Cocido y Crudo, at the Museo Nacional Centro de Reina Sofia, Madrid, last year. This installation presents a single screen image of the ground as shot while walking with a hand-held camera. The title eludes to the evidence ("smoke") seen of activities ("fire") that have transpired. A continuously repeating thirty-minute loop with sound, No Smoke Without Fire, is simultaneously disorienting and hypnotic.
Willie Doherty lives and works in Derry, Northern Ireland and has exhibited his work since 1986. Doherty's previous video installation, The Only Good One is a Dead One, was shown to much acclaim at the Grey Art Gallery, New York in fall 1994 and as part of the Tate Gallery's 1994 Turner Prize exhibition.