Catherine Opie Named 2004

Larry Aldrich Award Recipient

RIDGEFIELD — The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum has selected Catherine Opie as the recipient of its prestigious Larry Aldrich Award for 2004. Ms Opie will mount an exhibition in conjunction with this award at the museum, tentatively scheduled for 2006.

The annual Larry Aldrich Foundation Award honors an American artist whose work has had a significant impact on contemporary visual culture during the previous three years. An independent jury of artists, collectors, critics, curators and gallerists selects the winner.

Since 1995, the honoree receives $25,000 and the opportunity for an exhibition at The Aldrich. Previous winners of the award are David Hammons, 2003; Fred Wilson, 2002; Mark Dion, 2001; Doug Aitken, 2000; Janine Antoni, 1999; Ann Hamilton, 1998; Charles Ray, 1997; Robert Gober, 1996; Bruce Nauman, 1995; Cindy Sherman, 1994; and Elizabeth Murray, 1993.

In the mid 1990s Ms Opie rose to prominence with a series of photographs depicting individuals who use their bodies as a site of sexual and aesthetic experimentation, including several self-portraits. Ms Opie’s concern with communities and their intrinsic landscape led her from the body to architecture, urban sites and the family as subjects, leading many to describe her as a “cultural portraitist” for our time.

Her first city series, “Freeways,” depicted Los Angeles as a concrete jungle through its massive highways and urban sprawl, marking a sharp and formal contrast from her past work. “Skyways and IceHouses” followed, focusing on the culture and landscape of Minnesota in a project with The Walker Art Center.

“Domestic” captured a cross-country road trip through lushly-colored portraits of lesbian families living across the US, probing the evolving definition of family, and marked Ms Opie’s return to more traditional portraits of people as her subject matter.

In her most recent work, Ms Opie captured the California seascape and the surfers who inhabit its shores in large-scale color photographs.

Born in Sandusky, Ohio, Catherine Opie received a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. She is currently a professor of photography at The University of California, Los Angeles, where she lives and works.

Her photographs have been exhibited extensively in solo and group shows throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan.

The members of the jury which selected the 2004 Award recipient were Burt Aaron, Bill Arning, Shoshana Blank, Lisa Corrin, M. Thierry Davila, Xandra Eden, Ken Freed, Paul Ha, David Hammons, Salah Hassan, Stephen Hepworth, Lynn Herbert, Betti-Sue Hertz, Catriona Jeffries, Marvin and Alice Kosmin, Shamim Momin, Ann Philbin, John Ravenal, Michael Rush, Dean Sobel, Charles Stainback, Terrie Sultan, Patricia Sweetow, Hamza Walker and Jinny Wright.