" Irene Kung: Seven Trees"

• Artists:
• Irene Kung

Past Show : Apr 23-May 22 2021

Irene Kung's portfolio of seven large scale photographs on view this month in the main gallery. While her chosen medium is photography, the work transcends the photographic image and provides a strong emotional reaction to the viewer. Kung explains, “I shoot the tree at the moment, not for what it is, but for what I feel, what it brings about in me.”

Irene Kung is a Swiss photographer, who started her career as an abstract painter, and approaches her photographic image making in a very painterly way, changing the context of her subject through digital manipulation. Kung’s photographs are large scale, with the main subject, in this case a tree; central, strong and clear. The digital manipulation of the image mostly occurs in the background, which works to accentuate the form, “personality” and power of the tree. “In my photographs I am able to return the tree to what I felt standing in front of it. This is the way I perceive my work, stripping away what is not essential in order to show a tree as it really is, as I feel it. This is intuition; it is the irrational. What is rational may deceive us, feelings don’t.”