Checkered City
Erica Baum
2025
C-print
25.3 x 26.7 cm
Unframed
Edition of twenty-three copies numbered and signed by the artist, plus two artist’s proofs and two publisher’s proofs
This edition is part of City, a series of photographs taken primarily in the streets of New York, mostly of found objects or building facades. At first glance, the series seems to stand apart in the artist’s corpus, as there is little or no work on language, nor the use of close-ups and decontextualization that we usually associate with her work. And yet, on closer inspection, City fits very naturally alongside iconic series such as Card Catalogues, The Naked Eye and Patterns. Here, the artist continues her work as a sign gleaner, not in libraries, books, newspapers and other printed media, but on the urban stage. The city itself is approached as a precariously ordered system of signs, with a sense of humor reminiscent of Lee Friedlander. In Checkered City, a play of reflections deftly echoes the context of the windowed keijiban, causing the city and the photographer to be absorbed by a colorful grid, like a large abstract canvas. A piece of graffiti stands in the way and breaks the regularity of the pattern, adding another layer to the semiotic mille-feuille that is the modern city.
Erica Baum's exhibition took place at Keijiban from March 15 to April 14, 2025.