Mary Ellen Bartley

In her poetic, minimalistic photographs, the American artist Mary Ellen Bartley focuses her camera on aspects of material culture related to the printed word and image. Often, these take the form of still-life arrangements of books, ranging from beaten-up remaindered paperbacks to antique volumes. The images which reveal a tendency toward abstraction, are the result of slow, careful observation in the studio, and their compositions and depth of field emphasize the tactility of her well-worn subjects.

In her series Push 2 Stops (2015), she explores an absence of imagery by using empty 4-by-5-inch plastic film sleeves as material for abstract compositions. Arranging the transparent folders on a light table in painterly compositions that recall the early abstractions of Piet Mondrian or Kazimir Malevich, she roots her photographs in a language of predigital image circulation. Cryptic notations on the sleeves, edge numbering, and other labels not only offer a textual element, but also speak to the ways in which photographers, publishers, and printers once used these materials to transport and protect photographic transparencies and to document their calibration for reproduction. Such coded inscriptions and the relay of photographic materials have all but been replaced by Photoshop commands and email attachments, a temporal passage that Bartley’s images quietly observe. *

Born in New York City, Bartley received her BFA from Purchase College, SUNY. Her work has been exhibited in numerous institutions including Museo Morandi, Bologna, Italy; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis MN; The Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY; The Queens Museum, NY among others.
She has attended artist residences at Casa Morandi, Bologna, Italy; Karl Lagerfeld’s Library, Paris, France; and The Watermill Center, Water Mill, NY. Her work is held in permanent collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY: Museo Morandi, Bologna, Italy; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; The Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY; and the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY among others. The artist currently lives and works in Sag Harbor, NY.

* Eric Crosby, excerpted from Ordinary Pictures catalogue, Walker Art Center, 2016