Dietrich Wegner & Liza Berkoff

January 15—March 13, 2009

The Carrie Secrist Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by Dietrich Wegner on exhibit in the main gallery and new works by Liza Berkoff featured in the second gallery.

Every society accumulates contradictions amidst their ideals. Dietrich Wegner employs those contradictions, situating opposites together in sculptures and photographs that feed on the friction between two conflicting ideas. He creates images that are safe and unsettling, abject and beautiful. The implementation of the baby in this exhibition reflects Wegner’s interest and concern with how youths, even infants, are bombarded by commercialism and how this can affect the development of individual identities.

The world is a peculiar place, and it is this strangeness that Liza Berkoff is attracted to and chooses to document. She is inspired by the way people manipulate their surroundings and sees this in the display case of a butcher shop, the sparse geometry of a construction site, or a scrap of Astroturf left behind in a warehouse. In capturing these everyday images, the images receive the benefit of increased inspection, allowing their beauty and strangeness to be amplified.