Gregory Halpern: King, Queen, Knave
31st October, 2024 – 30th November 2024
HUXLEY-PARLOUR
3–5 Swallow Street
London
W1B 4DE
Huxley-Parlour are delighted to present King, Queen, Knave, a new solo exhibition of works by American photographer Gregory Halpern, now open at our Swallow Street gallery. The exhibition will present fourteen photographs from Halpern’s latest body of work, photographed over the last two decades mostly in and around his hometown of Buffalo, New York. The series extends beyond a portrait of place, celebrating the poetic idiosyncrasies of everyday life.
Untitled, from the series ‘King, Queen, Knave’, 2003-2023
Buffalo acts as a vast stage in Halpern’s series, hosting a cast of people, animals and buildings that pass before the photographer’s lens. At times the city feels outsized for its inhabitants: open spaces appear unvisited; a large factory looms over a solitary figure picking flowers in a meadow; snow- covered streets are left unwalked. In his photographs, Halpern reimagines the city’s abandoned sites and urban landscape. Once a centre of industry, which has since migrated elsewhere, along with half its population, Buffalo has witnessed significant loss, although a quiet resilience and strange sense of beauty remain.
Eschewing the straightforward approach of traditional documentary photography, Halpern seeks to encapsulate the contradictions and nuances that coalesce in the quotidian. In his compositions, the ‘ugly’ and the ‘beautiful’ coincide: a gable-roofed house is mirrored by its abandoned counterpart that leans precariously towards it; nature reclaims the hollowed out shells of disused spaces and the mundane is transformed into the otherworldly.
Time moves cyclically through the work, slowly unfolding across seasons as palettes of white and grey subside to warmer tones. Stretching time in this way, Halpern’s photographs probe the slippages between entropy and renewal, discerning an inherent hopefulness in our ability for regeneration.
Gregory Halpern: King, Queen, Knave open on the of 31st October, 2024 until 30th November, 2024 at HUXLEY-PARLOUR
©2024 HUXLEY-PARLOUR
Art Plugged is a contemporary platform inspired by a relationship with the broader arts communities. We provide our audience with curated insight into the world of art, from exhibitions to artist interviews and more.
