Mary Ellen Bartley’s photographs are not about the objects she pictures; blue-toned hardcover books are shot in ways that challenge spatial perception, for example, while a stack of paperbacks with multi-colored edges becomes a geometric abstraction. These transformations of ordinary objects into unique and thought-provoking arrangements of color and form connect Bartley with work by 20th century Italian artist Giorgio Morandi, who famously spent decades painting images of vessels as he explored the possibilities of representation. Begun during a residency at the Casa Morandi in Bologna and interrupted by the onset of the pandemic, Bartley’s new work at Yancey Richardson Gallery features books from Morandi’s library. Like Morandi, Bartley delays our reading of each picture’s components, sometimes by obscuring its components in a way that excites interest in the contents of the volumes and the possibilities of perception.
