Three or Four Clouds
Bridgette Mayer Gallery, 2012
Excerpt, Press Release for “Three or Four Clouds”:
As an expression of her interest in both the landscape and interiors as sites for a deeper investigation of presence and perception, Eileen Neff's “Three or Four Clouds” brings focus to the conflating of her experiences in the studio with those conditions at work in the gallery. Her fascination with installation concerns also informs and refines her photographic decisions within this body of images. With these works, the studio has become a vantage point, as well as the place of heightened attention Neff so values. She lives and works on the 29th floor of a Philadelphia apartment building in a space as carefully composed as her work itself. Neff has, for this occasion, used this aerie-like perspective as the primary source of what is her most diaristic work to date. From her studio she sees clouds pass, birds visit, and she reflects upon the play and beauty of natural light. Neff's work captures, in alternate turns, the poetic and the sublime. The artist uses the strategies of her photographic practice to transform her daily pleasures into the work for this exhibition.
Here and There
C-print mounted on Plexi, 55 x 76.75 inches
Installation view, "Three or Four Clouds”
Installation view, with A Cloud and Its Clouds and Postcloud
Postcloud
Pigment print in a wire postcard rack, 18 x 24 x 12 inches
A Cloud and Its Clouds
Pigment print mounted on Plexi, 9 x 21 1/4 inches
After Luigi
Pigment print mounted on Plexi, 28 1/4 x29 7/8 inches
Two Plants
Pigment print mounted on Plexi, 23 x 34 1/4 inches
Still Life
Pigment print mounted on Plexi, 11 x 11 inches
One and Three Birds
Pigment prints mounted on Plexi, 42 x 30 inches
Bird and Tree
Pigment print mounted on Plexi, 11 x 18 5/8 inches
Red Setting
C-print mounted on Plexi, 43 x 65 inches, 2012
Good Night Rain
C-print mounted on Plexi, 38 x 38 inches, 2012
Installation view, Blue 1 and Blue 2
Blue 1
C-print mounted on Plexi, 51 x 76 1/2 inches
Blue 2
C-print mounted on Plexi, 51 x 76 1/2 inches
Twin Peaks
Pigment print mounted on Plexi, 26 x 84 inches
Installation view, Three or Four Clouds
The Ordinary Day
C-print mounted on Plexi, 50 x 47 inches
Birdwatching
Pigment print mounted on Plexi, 9 x 9 3/4 inches
Installation view, In my room
vinyl lettering, 33 x 45 inches
In my room, Wall text from "Three or Four Clouds", is the first stanza of
Of the Surface of Things, by Wallace Stevens, 1919.
The poem is reprinted below in its entirety
I
In my room, the world is beyond my understanding;
But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four
Hills and a cloud.
II
From balcony, I survey the yellow air
Reading where I have written,
‘The spring is like a belle undressing.’
III
The gold tree is blue,
The singer has pulled his cloak over his head.
The moon is in the folds of the cloak.