The Approach is pleased to present a new solo exhibition by Lisa Oppenheim in The Annexe. Over the last two decades, Lisa Oppenheim has developed a body of work that is rooted in the photography while expanding the medium in order to examine its other material, media and their corresponding histories. For her most recent body of work, Oppenheim transforms and embodies the practice of one of the twentieth century’s most well-known yet enigmatic artists whose multifaceted career spanned nearly eighty years: Edward Steichen (1879 - 1973).
Steichen, a photographer, designer, curator, and flower hybridizer, viewed his flower cultivation on the same level as his photographic practice, on par with his work producing and designing exhibitions, books, watches, textiles and in 1928, a piano.
In a new series of photographic prints, Oppenheim revives a now- extinct variety of iris named Monsieur Steichen, which was created in 1910 by an amateur botanist as a tribute to Steichen. There are no known photographs of Mons. Steichen, nor extant examples of the flower. Oppenheim’s works bring this flower back to life using photographic techniques from two very different eras: dye transfer, which Steichen himself used in the 1930s and 40s, and artificial intelligence. Through AI technology, Oppenheim created images of hypothetical hybrids by merging images of the two varieties of iris that were originally used to create Mons. Steichen, creating possible offspring from each parent variety. She then produced analogue prints of the AI generated images using the labour–intensive and almost entirely extinct process of dye transfer printing. Using her own 'incorrect' colour combinations, Oppenheim creates a vast range of possible Mons. Steichen that explores the concepts of both genetic and photographic verisimilitude.
