Skip to main content

Press Release

Press Release

|   Press Release
Press Release | Where 9/11 happened, Neil Dern - artmedia GALLERY - Miami FL
ND 10, Words of Survival of the 9/11 massacre, National 9/11 Museum, 2014

Artmedia Gallery is proud to present the exhibition Where 9/11 happened: Photographs by Neil Dern, the first one displayed by the gallery with a body of work affiliated to New Documentary photography. In this sense, the exhibition diversifies the gallery’s understanding and approach to photography as a contemporary medium of visual production.

Moving from the financial world to photography the decade before, Neil Dern is not only a casual survivor to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but a visual researcher of this event and its particular sequels. For many years after the attacks, he has been visiting the original site where the “twin towers” were located with his hand-camera. There he has been looking for the traces of the past, the evidences of the striking occurrence, and the commemorative aspect of the ample profile assigned to the new spot.

Neil’s photographs convey a subjective exploration in reality. They are more interested in poetic rather than descriptive appearances of the world. The photographs refer to the recent story of the site with the resources of ellipsis, metonymy, and metaphor. However, they bring both a touching but well-thought perspective of its subject.

The photographer presents his body of work in two different discursive formats. The first is a selection of black and white photos, hung on the gallery walls; and the second is a slide color projection. They are two different ways to transmit his feelings and thoughts to the viewers. From the author, the attacks of 9/11 are—besides a dramatic chapter of our national history—part of his personal experience, which can be communicated to others, differently, again and again.

About the artist:

Neil Dern is a photographer who worked on Wall Street as a financial executive. Currently, he lives in Aventura, Florida.  He was at the WTC Complex to attend a meeting on the 96th floor of 1 WTC when the first plane hit the North Tower at 8:46am on the morning of 9/11/2001.  For the sake of possibly 10 minutes, he is here today. This is his first solo exhibition.
 

About the curator:

José Antonio Navarrete has developed an extensive international career as curator, researcher, and critic of visual arts and culture. His voluminous bibliography focuses on topics of modern and contemporary art, with emphasis on how media technology have affected and transformed the practices of artistic production. As an artist, he presented recently his first solo exhibition, What images can do.

About the gallery:

Artmedia Gallery was founded in 2012. Located at the Wynwood Art District in Miami, Florida, the gallery’s mission is to exhibit and promote contemporary art. One of the gallery’s central objectives is to explore the vast possibilities of the expanded notion of art thru media technology, with photography and video as the major core of its interest.

Artmedia Gallery’s exhibition program follows rigorous curatorial criteria, providing a space for reflection and critique. The exhibitions include local and around the world artists with a wide range of subjectivities and poetics that enrich the current sensibility.