Elger Esser: Six American Sunsets

Elger Esser's photographs walk a line between painterly concerns and photographic documentation, unapologetically beautiful images that document an emotional presence in the synchronicity of light and color. Six American Sunsets is the product of a two-month residency with The Lapis Press in Culver City, CA. Captured in the course of road trips through Central and Northern California and the Washington coast these images display the same searching gaze that expertly framed his well known landscapes of Western Europe. But in these images of the American West there's an added element of a place steeped in it's own myth; this is the end of westward expansion. Setting his tripod near the same bluffs Weston did decades before, Esser has created a body of work that takes into account the traditional canons of landscape photography and painting even as it pursues a contemporary conceptual model. Six American Sunsets is another magnificent achievement it is an impressive investigation of landscape, history, place and the imagery that surrounds it.

Elger Esser was born in Stuttgart in 1967 and was raised in Rome. In 1986, he moved to Düsseldorf, where he worked as a commercial photographer until 1991. He then attended the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie, studying with Bernd and Hilla Becher, until 1997. His work has been published in several monographs including most recently Ansichten – Views – Vues (Schrimer/Mosel, 2008). Esser's pictures are included in numerous public and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Foundation, Kunsthaus Zürich, and FNAC Paris.

The Lapis Press was founded in 1984 and has worked with such luminaries as Robert Therrien, Ed Moses, Marina Abramovic, Anish Kapoor, David Reed, Gabriel Orozco and Ed Ruscha to create editioned work as well as hand-bound artist books. Lapis' program is committed to creating a synergy between the dynamic art scene outside of America and the vitality of the blossoming cultural climate in Los Angeles. In 2005 Lapis established an artist-in-residence program providing the participating artist with an interactive and enriching environment that enables the individual to articulate their work in any medium. This exhibition marks the first partnering of The Lapis Press and ROSEGALLERY.