The Promise, 2024. Oil on canvas, 6’x13’. Poem:
My first doing was touch
Continents came and went
Under organ blasts
Sharp then ripe. Then I saw the Goddess
Blues of the Virgin
(“We swam today as Lovers”)
A gate. Anticipating, I waited.
At last I saw my Grandfather
Nearing death, extracting the promise.
And the avalanche began:
I saw Arshile
Retracing 194 steps
While Orators chant.
Then I saw myself
Leaning into the request.
I then saw the Ibex,
My de-orbit burn.
Then the snow melt
Come and go And double slits.
I saw then the faithful Crane,
Bonded
One
Thousand Autumns.
Then the fields:
Circles and squares,
Orion’s Belt
Now the chrome bumpers
Encircling
All.
As an Alumni (BFA VPA), I’m thrilled to have placed photographs from a couple of collection I work with in the Syracuse University Art Museum collection. These two are currently on view at Lubin house on East 61 Street jn Manhattan. @syracuseu@suartmuseum #lubinhouse
Christopher Bucklow
British, born 1957
The Field of the Gold Cloth, 2012
Cibachrome print
Anonymous gift
The work also allows us to expand our representation of the many photography techniques in our holdings. For this photograph, Bucklow uses a box-like camera he made himself to make this image. He places a sheet of light-sensitive paper at the bottom of the camera, then he places a sheet of aluminum foil that has been perforated with the pattern seen here. He then wheels his camera outdoors and exposes the sheet to sunlight to create the photograph. Each point of light is in fact an image of the sun’s disc. That’s a field of images of the sun itself that the viewer is looking at. As he has described, “The process is incredibly analog. It’s sort of a miracle that you get a clean image.”
David Goldblatt
South African, 1930-2018
The playing fields of Tladi, Soweto, August 1972
Gelatin silver print
#davidgoldblatt #christopherbucklow @christopherbucklow
My exhibition of Guests is opening tonight at the Hotel Metropole, Venezia. Curated by James Putnam, it will be visible during the whole of the Biennale, ending 22nd November. Courtesy of the Metropole Hotel, The Gervasuti Foundation, Venice and Elliott Gallery, Amsterdam.
I stumbled upon Christopher Bucklow’s work around 2015 when I was studying photo at SVA and i purchased his book ‘Guest’ at a sale. When I opened the book I felt like I unearthed a secret, like if I had suddenly peeled the skin off of an image to reveal the aura underneath.The images were silhouettes of bodies shrouded in heavenly blues, hot reds, pastoral greens.
The forms were porous, and made me feel scared at first - to accept that underneath it all is just matter constantly forming our bodies and holding us together. But it also brought me immense peace to consider that we truly were even more beautiful on the inside than what we allow our external appearances to be.
Full circle moment 2026 to have these beautiful works be a part of soul breaker and to finally meet irl. Thank you for your work Christopher and for this newfound friendship!
soul breaker closes in one week! Don’t miss it .
A final look at our exhibition “The Shape of Things: Where Color Meets Form”
The relationship between color and form in photography represents one of the medium’s most fundamental yet endlessly complex conversations. In contemporary photography, color functions not merely as an aesthetic overlay but as an active agent in the construction and definition of form itself. The relationship between chromatic information and dimensional presence has preoccupied photographers since the medium’s inception, but it is in the work of artists like Christopher Bucklow, Garry Fabian Miller, Jan Groover, Aurelio Amendola, and Edward Weston that we find some of the most profound investigations into how color—or its strategic absence—can generate, articulate, and transform our perception of form. These photographers demonstrate that color is not simply applied to form but rather participates in its very genesis and legibility.
Christopher Bucklow has joined us from the UK, and we’re looking forward to welcoming him to the gallery tomorrow morning for an artist talk celebrating our current exhibition, The Shape of Things: Where Color Meets Form.
We’ll be streaming live here on Instagram at 10:30am EST. We also have a few seats still available for local guests, so feel free to DM us to reserve.
