dnj is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition of “Surplus” by the young Austrian photographer Michael Krebs.  In gallery II, we present work by Gil Kofman, entitled “Passages - Case Studies in Euclidean Seduction.”

In “Surplus,” Krebs explores his view that a war of consumerism is taking place.  In this war, the victims are consumers who are manipulated into pursuing artificially created needs.  Citizens become dependent on their income to buy goods they do not need to remain competitive in today’s society.  Using powerful references to iconic war photographs, Krebs visualizes the modern western consumer’s struggle.  As he explains, “By not showing but only referring to iconic [war] images one becomes aware of how powerful pictures are that already ‘made history’ and have become part of our visual culture.”    

Krebs was born in Klosterneuburg, Austria, in 1985.  After graduating high school, he founded a photography class for HIV-positive children at an orphanage in Honduras.  Krebs created “Surplus” in 2010 as his diploma project for the Masterclass for Design at the Graphische, Vienna.  “Surplus” was exhibited at the Albertina Museum in Vienna, and was nominated for the International Photography Award in the category “Deeper Perspective.”  Krebs is currently continuing his photography studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.  This is Krebs’s first show in the United States.

In “Passages – Case Studies in Euclidean Seduction,” Kofman investigates a new way he has been looking at the geometry of ordinary hallways, or passages.  He states, “I discovered the hallways in this exhibit quite by chance.  I was simply trying to get from one place to the next, and these so-called passages comprised part of the material space I was forced to physically traverse and mentally discard.“  Mindful of the rigid organization imposed by conventional perspective, he examines the common objects in the hallways – chairs, clocks, doors, knobs and garbage cans-- as independent forms free from the constraints of vanishing points, horizon lines and orthogonals.  As the eye rushes down the length of the passage, these objects serve as the focal point of an exploration.

Kofman was born in Nigeria and raised in Kenya, Israel and New York.  He attended the NYU Graduate Film School after studying physics at Cornell.  He also holds an MFA in playwriting from the Yale School of Drama.  Kofman has also written, produced, directed and edited a variety of fiction, plays, documentaries and other films.  He is currently busy working on two separate film projects.  He has exhibited his work in New York and has previously sold his photographs through a gallery in Rome.  His work is in private collections in New York and Los Angeles and has appeared in the New York Times and other publications.  This is Kofman’s first show at dnj Gallery.