NEW CATALOGUE [LUKE BATTEN & JONATHAN SADLER]

Boy with Stockings / Whiskey and Cigarettes, 2008
Archival ink jet prints
Each image 8 1/4 x 10 1/2 inches on 8 ¼ x 10 ½ inch paper (2 separate pieces)
Signed Edition of 50 

(United States, b. 1968; b. 1965)

New Catalogue is an artists’ collaborative that adopts the model of a stock photo agency, presenting thematic series of images with the crisp aesthetic and pared-down descriptive titles of their commercial prototypes. Yet the artists carefully merge diverse references from popular culture, historical sources, and fine art in their photographs to create an elaborate compression of elements culled from, in their words, “postmodernity’s visual psyche.” While revealing a subtle eye for satire, their work stands as a pointed examination of the nature of representation and image-making in contemporary culture. In their recent series Tiger Afternoon the artists develop a narrative of American suburbia that they describe as “a Jean-Luc Godard version of a John Hughes film,” exploring and ultimately questioning the idealization of youth in our time.

Batten and Sadler completed MFA degrees at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, respectively, and they have since received the Ansel Adams Fellowship from the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona. Their work has been featured in the 2005 Prague Biennial at the National Gallery of Prague, as well as in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Walker Point Center for the Arts, Milwaukee. New Catalogue’s first monograph, Big Ten Co-Eds, Preppy Girls, and The Lost Cheerleaders, was published by Nazraeli Press in 2006. Bucket Rider Gallery, Chicago will exhibit the Tiger Afternoon series in 2008.