Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art
Hamilton College
September 9–December 9, 2023
Curated by Tracy L. Adler, Johnson-Pote Director
Through her photographic practice, Rhona Bitner creates images that focus on the domains and trappings of performance, evoking personal and collective memory. Spanning the last three decades, this exhibition marks the artist’s first museum survey and brings together original works from the 1990s with newly produced chromogenic and archival inkjet prints in every scale from the intimate to the heroic.
Bitner’s sumptuous photographs provide an intimate view of the architecturally rich interiors of music, dance, and theater venues, among other bodies of work. Beginning with a large array of prints from her “Circus” series made between 1991–2001, illuminating the art of traditional European circus acts at the close of the twentieth century, and ending with “Tour,” a four-part work from 2022 linking the worlds of live performance and fandom, the exhibition highlights the various longitudinal photographic projects undertaken by the artist throughout her career. Series featured include “Listen” (2006–18), for which Bitner traveled to and photographed 395 music venues throughout the US, exploring the history of American popular music, “Stage” (2003–8), in which classical theater interiors anticipate the rise and fall of the curtain, and the ongoing series “Pointe,” which depicts the worn toe shoes of professional ballerinas in extreme closeup and presented at a grand scale. Her work immortalizes the spaces and objects that have shaped us as individuals and as a culture. For Bitner, the intention is for “viewers to imagine themselves within the spaces and situations the work depicts so that the photographs will spark their own memories and experiences. This synergy is the pulse of the work.”
