Canada

Apr 14, 2022 - May 21, 2022

60 Lispenard Street

P: 212 925 4631

New York, NY

10013

canadanewyork.com

Lee Mary Manning: Ambient Music

Installation view of Mary Manning Ambient Music

Text by Lydia Okrent

Lee makes a point to let me know that whatever we see in the image is correct. And it feels like someone whispering “yes” whenever my eyes land on something. I spend the rest of day trying to pay attention to everything that is beside the point, the incidental and the elemental. There’s nothing there that isn’t already there and all I have to do is look.     

A hand pointing to a flower, a truck driving by, a friend saying “look.” It’s like that. Following the hand, turning your head. It almost doesn’t matter what you see, it’s the looking that sticks. The profundity is determined by the amount of time you spend paying attention to the arch of the now-demolished amphitheater or the wintering fern or the swan looking down the drain. I move from work to work, moving to the subtleties of Lee’s low-key emotional rhythm.

I’m down to be moved. I’m a dancer. Lee sees a lot of dance. Of their 7 cameras, not a single one can zoom in. Lee crouches, twists, reaches or otherwise uses their body to focus on the moment in the act. A corporeal zoom. The audience enters in the midst of an encounter. An embodiment captured. 

They follow improvisational intuition, in their studio shifting photos around until innate harmony proposes the next possibility. Like in Authentic Movement, where one person, with eyes closed, finds an emotional or energetic impulse and moves from there while the other, with eyes open, watches without judgement.

And I think Lee’s sincerity is punk. All of the photos in Ambient Music were taken between 2019 and 2021. While everything is falling to pieces, Lee emboldens available tenderness by saying “hey, can I show you something?” 

***

“As soon as the poem ceases to be about anything, when it even stops saving things, stops being such a collector, it becomes an invite to the only refuge which is the impossible moment of being alive.” - Eileen Myles Inferno

Lee Mary Manning (b. 1972, Alton, Illinois) models a method of close looking in carefully arranged juxtapositions of 35mm analog prints. Taking familiar objects and scenes as their subject matter, Manning’s photos picture people, nature, the street, and everything in between. Conceptualizing “paying attention as a practice of being alive,” the artist insists on the importance and meaning of quiet moments and humdrum things. For Manning, photography is an exercise in recording and collecting—often prints are paired with saved mementos such as insect parts, a restaurant napkin, or a plastic bag. The works exemplify both photography and looking as acts of care, tenderly drawing our attention to modest but remarkable moments. 

Expressionism, 2022
Chromogenic print, mat board, artist's frame
20 ¼ × 16 ¼ × 1 ½ in. 

Everything You Do Is A Balloon, 2022
Chromogenic prints, mat board, paper, dried leaves and flowers, artist's frame
20 ¼ × 16 ¼ × 1 ½ in.

Installation view of Lee Mary Manning Ambient Music

Lee Mary Manning in their studio. Photo by Marquale Ashley.

Mike Leigh, 2022
Chromogenic print
10 3/4 × 8 1/4 × 1 1/8 in. 

Medium Soils, 2022
Chromogenic prints, mat board, artist's frame
28 ¼ × 30 ¼ × 1 ½ in. 

Genuflect (For/After Jonas Mekas), 2022
Chromogenic prints, mat board, artist's frame
38 ½ × 24 ¼ × 1 ½ in. 

Installation view of Lee Mary Manning Ambient Music

Lee Mary Manning in their studio. Photo by Marquale Ashley.

Milling Around the Village, 2022
Chromogenic prints, mat board, artist's frame
30 ¼ × 20 ¼ × 1 ½ in. 

Dandelion, 2022
Chromogenic prints, mat board, artist's frame
20 ¼ × 16 ¼ × 1 ½ in. 

Installation view of Lee Mary Manning Ambient Music

Lee Mary Manning in their studio. Photo by Marquale Ashley.

His Estate, 2022
Chromogenic prints, mat board, artist's frame
33 ¼ × 22 ½ × 1 ½ in. 

Oh!, 2022
Chromogenic prints, mat board, artist's frame
22 ½ × 17 × 1 ½ in. 

Fourteen June Two Thousand Twenty, 2022
Chromogenic prints, mat board, artist's frame
10 ⅞ × 14 ⅜ × 1 ½ in. 

Anacampserote, 2022
Chromogenic prints, watercolor, paper, mat board, artist's frame
9 ½ × 12 × 1 ½ in. 

Installation view of Lee Mary Manning Ambient Music

Lee Mary Manning in their studio. Photo by Marquale Ashley.

Bar Soap, 2022
Chromogenic prints, mat board, artist's frame
20 ¼ × 16 ¼ × 1 ½ in. 

Sharp Cutting Wings (Song to a Poet), 2022
Chromogenic prints, mat board, moth wings, artist's frame
28 ¼ × 18 ½ × 1 ½ in. 

Rubric, 2022
Chromogenic prints, mat board, artist's frame
20 ¼ × 16 ¼ × 1 ½ in. 

Installation views of Lee Mary Manning Ambient Music

Ambient Music, 2022
Chromogenic print
25 ¾ × 18 ¼ × 1 ½ in.

Lee Mary Manning in their studio. Photo by Marquale Ashley.