Cara Barer: camera work

Catherine Couturier Gallery is pleased to present Cara Barer: camera work, the gallery’s second solo exhibition by the Houston-based artist. Through this stunning new body of work, she breathes new life into old books, exploring the ephemerality of the physical medium in today’s digital age. Barer’s unique approach begins with the hand-sculpting and dyeing of disused books; old manuals, outdated reference books, and the like are selected for their obsolete value, long since replaced by online materials. In prior bodies of work, these sculptural objects are then photographed using a scanner, capturing a single dimension of the book. Barer kept each and every sculpture and slowly began to look at them from new angles. In Camera work, Barer abandons the scanner bed for the camera, photographing the sculptures in the natural light of the studio, waiting for the perfect light each day and exposing new dimensions to the work. The resulting images are vibrant, sun-drenched, and entirely captivating. Cara Barer has exhibited in solo and group shows throughout the US and Canada since 1994. Her work has been featured extensively in such publications as New York magazine, The Washington post, Harper’s magazine, The Boston globe and The New Yorker, and can be found in the collections of Bloomingdale’s, Saks, Lehigh University, Nordstrom, United States Embassy, Kyiv, Ukraine, VISA, Wells Fargo Bank and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.