Born in 1961 in New York (US), Erica Baum has become internationally known for her photographic work delving into and mining found sources of text and image. She has worked with subject matter from library card catalogues and books. With a seemingly effortless touch for re-framing found printed material, Baum exposes new compositions, references and potential narratives in her photographs. A precise, economical storyteller, Baum produces strikingly elegant encounters of found poetry and fragmentary abstraction, untethered to the artist’s original source material.
I consider these objects obliquely as artifacts with the potential to reflect their milieu. (...) In the intersection between the individual and the factory the photographs of these twentieth century items present a voice that reminds us of the individual in the midst of the machine, whether it’s the library system or a mechanical piano or a mass market book, the voice is ghostly, funny and absurd. (Erica Baum)
Erica Baum lives and works in New York. She received a B.A. in anthropology from Barnard College and an M.F.A. in Photography from the Yale School of Art. She participated in numerous group exhibitions at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, The Jewish Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 30th Sao Paulo Biennial, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Whitechapel Gallery, London... Recent solo exhibitions include Crèvecœur, Paris, Bureau, New York, Kunstverein Langenhagen, Klemm’s, Berlin.
Her work is featured in numerous institutional collections including, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Yale Art Gallery, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Aïshti Foundation, Bury Art Museum & Sculpture Centre, Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP), FRAC Île-de-France, FRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Hood Museum of Art, Musée d’art moderne et contemporain - MAMCO, Geneva, Norton Museum of Art, University of Guelph McClelland & Stewart Art Gallery.
Courtesy Crèvecoeur

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