La Caja Blanca will open its new season of exhibitions on Thursday 21st of September 2006 with a solo show by the Irish Photographer and video artist Richard Mosse.

In a time when war torn cities and landscapes devastated by natural disasters fill the newspapers and television programmes we consume, this young artist questions the validity of the images distributed by the media industry as a means of communicating the reality of human suffering.

To present this selection of stunning photographs and thought-provoking video pieces, Richard will be travelling to Mallorca from his studio at Yale School of Art, USA.

Richard will be available for interviews between 18th and 22nd of September.

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Untitled [Bosnia] II _ lambda print _ June 2002 _ edition of 3

(photograph showing shelled offices of Bosnian Daily newspaper 'Oslobodenje', Serbo-Croat word for 'liberty')

ARTIST: Richard Mosse [1980, County Kilkenny, Republic of Ireland]

CURATORS: Amir and Eva Shakouri Torreadrado

OFFICIAL OPENING: Thursday 21st September 2006 from 19:00 CET. onwards

PRESS CONFERENCE: Tuesday 19th of September 2006, 12:00 - 13:00 [C.C. Pelaires]

EXHIBITION LOCATION: La Caja Blanca, Calle Verí 9, Palma de Mallorca 07001, Spain

In a time when images of war torn cities and landscapes devastated by natural disasters fill the newspapers and television programmes we consume, this young artist questions the validity of the images distributed by the media industry as a means of communicating the reality of human suffering.

Richard's photographs and video pieces have been taken in locations most foreign offices have blacklisted, including Bosnia, Ramallah, Beirut, Kosovo, Iran and Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province. In what will be his first solo show ever, Richard will present a selection of feisty video pieces and stunning photographs produced between 2002 and 2006.

The photographs show devastated landscapes and schoolrooms crumbling onto the classroom desks... images which despite the subject matter, fail desperately to reveal any of the human suffering which took place. Instead, what strikes the viewer is an overwhelming sense of stillness, serenity and stunning beauty.

The videos go even further... Ya'ni Intifada (2005) and Jew on a Ball (2006) interview the inhabitants of these locations with the artist's characteristic cheekiness, only to reveal the apparent impossibility of transmitting human passions and pain through language.

Richard's work is fresh, feisty and absolutely stunning.

Richard's last visit to Mallorca - to begin preparations for his upcoming show - was marked by the unexpected news of Israel's invasion of Lebanon. Richard had been in Beirut only a few weeks before his visit to Spain, gathering the footage for what has now become his most recent piece; "Jew on a Ball".

These circumstances had a profound effect on the project Richard was preparing, leaving it with a distinct Middle-Eastern flavour.

Richard's next visit to Mallorca, will be in the month of September, when he will travel from the US (where he is currently completing an MFA in photography at Yale School of Art), to attend his opening show at the LCB Gallery.

What makes a twenty something year old scrape together the cash from a student loan, pick up his camera, and traipse over to a war zone to shoot his own targets?

UPBRINGING

Richard was born in County Kilkenny (Republic of Ireland) in 1980 in a Quaker family. He studied in Quaker schools until the age of 18 when he moved to London, the city he considers home despite the dislike he professes for the underground.

His father is an internationally renowned Master potter who specialises in traditional pottery techniques in Ireland. Thanks to him and his relationship with other artists and craftsmen, Richard was exposed to contemporary art from a very young age.

Family friends such as James Turrell*, also a Quaker, spent substantial time with the Mosse family in Kilkenny, producing part of his work in collaboration with Nicholas Mosse, Richard's father in the family house**.

TRAINING

Richard Mosse was awarded a place at the prestigious Goldsmiths College (London), a university with a reputation for producing some of the most famous and infamous artists, including members of the YBA generation such as Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin, and Tacita Dean among many others.

Only a few months into the course, Richard was advised by his tutor to 'stick to commercial photography (read give up trying to be an artist). A hard blow for a young aspiring artist.

Mosse was warned his place at Goldsmiths could be retracted if he did not stop making trips across the world and stay in his London studio like the rest of his colleagues.

A couple of months later, things took an unexpected turn... Mosse was selected to participate in the 2005 edition of Bloomberg New Contemporaries, a highly regarded exhibition which plays a vital role in unearthing fresh talent amongst artists emerging on the international arts scene. This news helped convince Richard's cynical tutors to bear with the unorthodox working methodology... and so, Richard was able to continue travelling to war-zones and sites of natural disasters in his quest for 'understanding people, places and situations' through his art, without having to renounce to academic training.

Richard is currently immersed in one of the world's most exclusive institutions dedicated to photography. He is studying an MFA in photography at Yale School of Art.

*

About James Turrell: Born in California (1943), James Turrell and his compatriot Robert Irwin were key figures in the "light and space school", a movement in which "perception" rather than the object is key to "experience" of the artwork, that is the "artwork" is a mere light conduit for experience.

**

"Lapsed Quaker Ware" is one of the pieces Turrell produced in conjunction with master potter Nicholas Mosse. The work consists of a set of seventy-some pieces of pottery, coming out of Josiah Wedgwood's 18th Century designs (Wedgwood was himself another Quaker). The thinking, designing, slow process of figuring out the fabrication, and final perfected execution of Lapsed Quaker Ware (which had as its working title love, obedience, drink) was a five-year collaboration among the two men.

[+] info: Video Preview [2006, "Jew on a Ball"] (flash required 6.9MB)

[+] info: Exhibition Catalogue [adobe format]

[+] info: Artist Page [Richard Mosse]

[+] info: Artist CV html page [Richard Mosse]

[+] info: Exhibition Press Release [adobe format]

[+] info: Media Coverage [press clippings]

[+] info: Exhibition Images [gallery of images from the exhibition]

[+] info: Selection of Images by the artist