A Conversation With Curtis Mann
by Carmen Winant, Dossier Journal, October 12th, 2011
I first met Curtis Mann when he arrived with a small backpack at my San francisco apartment to spend five nights on an inflatable mattress in my living room. He was there to give a lecture on his work at the California College of Arts, where I was a graduate student, and to surf as much as possible while on the west coast. I immediately liked him. He was open about his experiences and curious about mine. We spoke at length about our evolving art practices, and the anxiety and excitement that comes with pushing our careers forward. .......
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Editor’s Pick – Top International Shows: January 10 – January 17, 2011
by Rebecca Wilson, SAATCHI Online Magazine, January 10 2011
In Curtis Mann’s most recent works, found photographs of conflicted and historically complex places throughout the Middle East are subjected to a process of selection and erasure. By painting on portions of enlarged color photographs with a clear varnish and then bleaching away unprotected portions of the image, new and abstract meanings are sought from appropriated snapshots, travel photographs, and casual documentations. The photograph is physically and contextually altered; as a result, the work oscillates between image and object, photography and painting, real and imagined. This is Mann’s first U.S. exhibition since his inclusion in the 2010 Whitney Biennial.
http://magazine.saatchionline.com/top-10-shows/editor%E2%80%99s-pick-%E2%80%93-top-international-shows-january-10-%E2%80%93-january-17-2011
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BLEACHED : Opening Up Limits of Truth and Photography
by Kristen Carter, Jettison Quarterly, Spring 2010
...According to the artist, he has always been curious about the physical nature of the photograph. "Paying attention to the photograph as an object exposes it as something impermanent, fallible and extremely malleable," explains Mann. "Coming from a mechanical engineering background, I have always been curious about the chemicals and inks used to produce photographs. The flat, conventional, image holds potential."...
JettisonQuarterly.com
Curtis Mann Explores the Varnished and White-Washed Truths of Photography
by Alice Thorson, The Kansas City Star, August 7, 2010
...“Photographs are so powerful,” Mann said recently. “They want to make you come to judgment so quickly.
A lot of masking, filtering and shredding of the images hold people back from doing that."....
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UBS 12X12: Curtis Mann
by Karsten Lund, flavorpill, 2009
Like a fever dream, Curtis Mann's bleached and altered found photographs seem to drift outside of time. The images often depict places blighted by violence, but from one work to the next, a large white void swallows the scene and hazy swathes of color lick at what remains like ghostly flames. A few solitary figures inhabit these vanishing landscapes, and the viewer is left to ponder their half-told stories, searching for meaning in the uncertain remnants of the photographic record. There's a doomsday quality to Mann's pictures — not unlike McCarthy's The Road — but they're buoyed by a sense of hope and perseverance. The prints have a certain beauty of their own, as if to say, "Savor the dream, dive deeper."
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MP3 II
by Abraham Ritchie, ArtSlant, August 2009
...Mann gets his images from “online auctions, photo-sharing sites and estate sales. These are already once or twice removed from their original authorship, form, context . . . He specifically looks for records of violence in places like Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Kenya.” Mann then manipulates these images slightly with Adobe Photoshop, orders conventional chemical color prints via an online service, uses varnish to preserve specific areas of the print, and bleach to remove other areas. The result is an image with preserved recognizable areas divided by bands of white-hot orange and red. These divisions represent borders, religious sects and violence....
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Artists gear up for Armory: Local talent represented at international fair, Biennial exhibition in New York
by Lauren Viera, Chicago Tribune, March 4, 2010
It's Armory Week. Falling on certain ears, this news conjures knights conferencing in gaggles, their heavy chain mail collectively clinking. But creative types know better: Armory Week is one of the biggest events of the year for visual artists.
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