Being the earliest, as well as one of few photographic bodies of work by Steve McQueen, the series Barrage emerged in the course of several stays in Paris. While walking the streets McQueen’s attention was drawn not to the historical façades or tourist attractions of the city, but to the gutter. Strange, string-tied bundles of rags, lying on the street between pavement and traffic lane, form barriers [barrage] to channel the waste water from vegetable markets and shops into the sewer, an ancient and simple means used by Parisian street sweepers. Captured in the cold light of day or under the harsh glare of flash-photography, Barrage continues the tradition of Parisian street photography, capturing the strange and uncanny in the everyday, and the gloomy, damp materiality of anonymous Parisian streets. The cropped and serial photography reveals how even the most unprepossessing things can be transformed into a visual event when seen through the attentive eyes of a viewer with a formalist turn of mind.
Steve McQueen
15 3/4 x 19 3/4 in.
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Being the earliest, as well as one of few photographic bodies of work by Steve McQueen, the series Barrage emerged in the course of several stays in Paris. While walking the streets McQueen’s attention was drawn not to the historical façades or tourist attractions of the city, but to the gutter. Strange, string-tied bundles of rags, lying on the street between pavement and traffic lane, form barriers [barrage] to channel the waste water from vegetable markets and shops into the sewer, an ancient and simple means used by Parisian street sweepers. Captured in the cold light of day or under the harsh glare of flash-photography, Barrage continues the tradition of Parisian street photography, capturing the strange and uncanny in the everyday, and the gloomy, damp materiality of anonymous Parisian streets. The cropped and serial photography reveals how even the most unprepossessing things can be transformed into a visual event when seen through the attentive eyes of a viewer with a formalist turn of mind.
Provenance
The artistExhibitions
(Complete edition only)
Steve McQueen: Works, Schaulager Basel, Basel, Switzerland, 1 March – 7 July 2013
(singular works)
Street Life and Home Stories. Fotografien aus der Sammlung Goetz, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, Germany, 1 June – 11 September 2011
Urban Baroque, Plane Space, New York NY, 16 November – 21 December 2003
6th Lyon Biennial, Lyon, France, 23 June – 23 September 2001 (16, 32, 33, 45, 53)
Steve McQueen, Barrage, daadgalerie, Berlin, Germany, 22 January – 12 March 2000
Steve McQueen, Kunsthalle Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland, 12 June – 15 August 1999
Steve McQueen, Institute of Contemporary Art, London, England, 30 January - 21 March 1999
Collections
Collection S.Winckler (complete collection)
Literature
I want the screen to be a massive mirror, Basel: Schaulager Basel, Steudler Press, 2013 p. 67 ill.
Steve McQueen: Works, Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago; Basel: Schaulager Basel; Berlin: Kehrer, 2012 pp. 88-89 ill.
Buhrs, Michael, ed., Street life and home stories: Photographs from the Goetz Collection, Munich: Villa Stuck; Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2011
Steve McQueen: Barrage, Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Koenig, 2000
Steve McQueen, Caracas: Sala Mendoza; Cape Town: Institute for Contemporary Art; São Paulo: Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, 2000 (n.p) (selected photographs)
Van Noord, Gerrie, ed., Steve McQueen, texts by Robert Storr, Michael Newman and Okwui Enwezor, London: ICA; Zurich: Kunsthalle Zürich, 1999 pp. 47-48 ill.