FOR 2/29

DIRK BRAECKMAN ON VIEW AT ROBERT MILLER GALLERY w/1 cut

avv/gs set 2/20 #72618

NEW YORK CITY — Robert Miller Gallery presents the first New York solo exhibition of the artist Dirk Braeckman, on view through March 22. The show includes photographs from his “z.Z(t).I” and “z.Z(t).II” series in addition to recent work.

Braeckman’s photographs, the majority of them in black and white, focus on abstract spaces, domestic interiors and other loci of the built environment. The subtle range of tone and the fine matte surface of his gelatin silver prints give these images an enigmatic presence. Flatness and depth become difficult to discern, paradoxical.

Braeckman’s lens focuses on the details in a corner, on a body, on a specific interior or a sterile public space, yet the effect is anything but confining. Printed large scale in lush tonality, the photographs have both an expansive and tactile quality.

Braeckman concentrates on the personal and the tentative. He says, “To me, it’s about sensing and playing on certain photographic conditions — the frame, the ephemerality of an exposure, the way one reads black and white or color, the blurriness, the light.”

Braeckman was born in 1958 in Eeklo, Belgium. He was commissioned to make portraits of the Belgian King Albert and Queen Paola, which are permanently installed along with other of his works in the Royal Palace in Brussels.

Braeckman’s photographs have been shown in a retrospective exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (SMAK) in Ghent. His recent solo shows were at the Bernie/Eliades Gallery in Athens, Greece and at the DuPont Foundation for Contemporary Art, Tilburg, Netherlands.

The gallery is at 524 West 26th Street. For information, www.robertmillergallery.com or 212-366-4774.