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Flor Garduno

Fantastic Women

May 3 – June 23, 2007

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Press Release

FLOR GARDUÑO
Fantastic Women

May 3 through June 23, 2007
Opening Reception, Thursday, May 3, 7 - 9 p.m.

The Fahey/Klein Gallery is pleased to present new work from Mexican photographer Flor Garduño. Fantastic Women takes viewers on a visual display of beauty, wonder, and intrigue. Garduño's photographs continue the exploration of the fictionalized feminine ideal by reinterpreting the human figure as the archetypal representation of today's woman. "She takes photography into the realm of magical realism and creates a new dialogue by rewriting the story of woman with new legends and new myths" (Tereso Caspa Hurst, Bello Magazine, 2006).

With careful construction of ritualistic, symbolic, and visual logistics, the world envisioned in Fantastic Women becomes one of truth, dreams, and an examination of the human condition. Garduño's focus on the female form is heightened by its coupling with elements of rich texture and contrasts of light which create imaginative and ethereal compositions that unravel and investigate the universal concepts of creation.

At the age of 18, Flor Garduño attended the School of Fine Arts at the National University in Mexico City, mentored by the Hungarian artist Katie Horna. After finishing her studies in 1979, Garduño was hired by Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo as a darkroom assistant where she further developed her discipline and photographic skills. Garduño took her first independent position under the Secretary of Public Education where she was sent to parts of rural Mexico to document indigenous people-a project that later gave Garduño an avenue in which to use fantastical elements in her future work. Garduño's first book, Testigos del Tiempo (Witnesses of Time, Aperture, 1992) garnered both international exposure and recognition by having been published in five languages with seven editions and touring more than 40 exhibitions worldwide. Since then, she has published Inner Light/ Flor (Bulfinch Press, 2002) and Silent Natures (Gabriele Capelli Editore, 2005), two additional books that define Garduño's poetic photography.

Garduño's photography has been exhibited in over 35 museums including the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, the Museum of Modern Art - New York and Houston, the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as numerous other museums worldwide. Flor Garduño currently lives in Mexico and Switzerland with her daughter and her son.