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Dennis Farber

Painted Photographs from the 1980's

ONLINE EXHIBITION

July 9 – August 20, 2021

Untitled (Gold Palm), c. 1988

Untitled (Gold Palm), c. 1988
Acrylic on color photograph
20 × 24 inches

Dennis Farber Untitled (Purple Landscape), c. 1980s Acrylic on color photograph

Untitled (Purple Landscape), c. 1980s
Acrylic on color photograph
15 × 19 inches

Dennis Farber Untitled (Green Demolition), c. 1980s Acrylic on color photograph

Untitled (Green Demolition), c. 1980s
Acrylic on color photograph
14.5 × 18.875 inches

Dennis Farber Untitled (Green Field with Fence), c. 1980s Acrylic on color photograph

Untitled (Green Field with Fence), c. 1980s
Acrylic on color photograph
14.625 × 18.75 inches

Dennis farmer Untitled (Red Columns), c. 1980s Acrylic on color photograph

Untitled (Red Columns), c. 1980s
Acrylic on color photograph
15 × 19 inches

Dennis Farber Untitled (Geometric Landscape Study), n.d.

Untitled (Geometric Landscape Study), n.d.
Acrylic on black-and- white photograph
12.25 × 18.25 inches

Oaxaca, 1985 Acrylic on color photograph

Oaxaca, 1985
Acrylic on color photograph
28.25 × 36 inches

Dennis Farber Untitled (Street Scene), c. 1985

Untitled (Street Scene), c. 1985
Acrylic on color photograph
29 × 37.5 inches

 

Denni sFarber Untitled (Fence), 1985

Untitled (Fence), 1985
Acrylic on color photograph
17.75 × 22.625 inches

Dennis Farber Untitled (Gold Figures), c. 1980s Acrylic on color photograph

Untitled (Gold Figures), c. 1980s
Acrylic on color photograph
16 × 13.25 inches

Dennis Farber Untitled (Bronze City), c. 1980s Acrylic on color photograph

Untitled (Bronze City), c. 1980s
Acrylic on color photograph
18.25 × 23.75 inches

Dennis Farber Untitled (Architectural Study), c. 1980s

Untitled (Architectural Study), c. 1980s
Acrylic on color photograph
15 × 19 inches

Dennis Farber Untitled (Purple Composition),1982 Acrylic on color photograph

Untitled (Purple Composition),1982
Acrylic on color photograph
14.625 × 19 inches

Press Release

“I’ve not been an artist interested in developing and refining a consistent iconography or even stay within one media or medium. I continually go back and forth between being a painter and an image-maker, challenging my own ideas about the perceived boundaries of both...At a certain point into one’s practice, it seems to me one’s work propels itself, that is, ideas come from working.”
—Dennis Farber

Beginning in the early 1980's, Laurence Miller Gallery has featured Dennis Farber in multiple solo and group exhibitions over the years.  With so many artists today further expanding the photographic medium, with both historic and contemporary methods, we believe the time is right to revisit Farber's early experiments in combining painting and photography.
 

Dennis Farber (1946-2017) was an American painter, photographer, and teacher. Born on March 8, 1946 in Pittsburgh, PA, he received a BA from Trinity College, Hartford, CT in 1968 and an MFA from The Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, CA in 1975. He died in Baltimore, MD on May 8, 2017.

In a 40-year career Farber’s work covers a broad range, from abstract paintings to manipulated images to large format 20” x 24” Polaroid prints to Inkjet painted photographs. His pieces are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Baltimore Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the International Center of Photography in New York, the Jewish Museum in New York, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, and numerous others.

Farber’s photographic work was part of photography’s expanding boundaries in the 1970’s and 80’s. He participated in Polaroid Corporation’s Artist Support Program, utilizing pictures from his collages of found images and re-photographing them on the 20 x 24 Polaroid camera. In 1992 his large format Polaroids were showcased in MoMA’s “New Photography 8” exhibit. That same year his work was one of six contemporary artists’ works in The Jewish Museum’s widely traveled exhibit, “Bridges and Boundaries, African Americans and American Jews.” In 2000 the work appeared in “OPEN ENDS, Innocence and Experience,” The Museum of Modern Art’s millennial exhibit.

In 1987 Farber was a recipient New York Foundation for the Arts Grant. He was also awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Grant in 1995 and a Mid-Atlantic Council for the Arts Grant in 2005.

Farber was also an influential teacher, at both undergraduate and graduate levels at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque (1993-1998), and the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (1998-2016). He also directed MICA’s Mount Royal Graduate School of Art, 2000-2004.