Message #615

Name:	Ingrid Boberg: Home Beautiful
Date:	Saturday December 3, 2005 7:38:10 am MST
Subject:	Opening Reception
Message:	Ingrid Boberg: Home Beautiful December 3, 2005 – January 11, 2006 Opening Reception: Saturday, December 3, 6 – 9 pm MB FINE ART 612 North Almont Dr., West Hollywood, CA 90069 Contact, Shannon Richardson Tel, 310.550.0050, fax, 310.550.0605 Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10am-5pm and by appointment Ingrid Boberg, “Swan”, 2005, pigment print with sandex laminate mounted on dibond, 32 x 46 inches. MB Fine Art Los Angeles is pleased to present Home Beautiful, an exhibition of photographs by New Zealand artist Ingrid Boberg. In Home Beautiful, Boberg seduces the viewer into a fantastical representation of domestic design. The decorating of one’s home to reflect personal style and taste is nothing new. The collection and display of objects create a space and ambience completely reflective of the owner’s personality. However, in the last few decades, this passionate and personal pastime has grown into a full-blown industry of third party advisors. While we still strive for our environment to reflect our individuality, we ironically turn to magazines filled with pages of perfectly designed rooms and impeccably coordinated furniture for inspiration. We hire interior designers to make these personal decisions for us, and in the midst of it all, a piece of ourselves is lost. In Home Beautiful, Boberg comments on this peculiar, yet accepted phenomena. Playing on our make-over culture, Boberg creates her own domestic interiors, intentionally exaggerating the arrangements we would likely find in a magazine. The retro furniture and cute porcelain animals decorating her environment nod to the pristine era of the 1950’s housewife. Everything is perfectly placed, spaced and coordinated. Studio lights perfectly and evenly illuminate every object. Nothing is what we would expect to find in a normal home, as Boberg intentionally places these elements in relationships to each other, quietly mocking the formal, contrived spaces we aim to imitate. Like Gregory Crewdsen’s theatrically staged scenes, Boberg’s seemingly familiar environments become overwhelmingly disquieting. However, unlike the overtly foreboding Crewdsen environment, Boberg camouflages her interiors with what the artist calls the “cute factor,” which takes the viewer outside of reality and into the fantastical. We are quietly seduced by her selection and arrangement of the objects. These interiors are what we desire and wish to mimic in our own homes, but ironically, they are settings of conformity and lack individuality. They seem warm, yet stifled. They seem familiar, yet distant. They seem pleasant, yet disconcerting. But in the end, the beauty of it all is that we still love them. For the last ten years, Ingrid Boberg has held the position of Head of Photography on the Bachelor of Visual Arts at Auckland University of Technology. She has twice been accepted as a finalist for the Salon de la Researche Photographique in Royan France. In 2005, Boberg was a finalist in the New Zealand Vodafone Digital Art Awards and a finalist at the Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award, the most distinguished contemporary art award in New Zealand. Boberg is represented by Whitespace Gallery in Auckland, New Zealand and has exhibited around Australia and Europe. This will be her first solo exhibition in the United States.

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