Andra Ursuta @ David Zwirner

Joy Revision, is an exhibition of work by Andra Ursuţa. The exhibition debuts new photograms and lead crystal sculptures that stem from a premodern conception of art as an essential tool to deal with mortality, loss, and grief. Ursuţa’s photograms, which have been a core element of her practice for many years, engage with the history and technology of photography since the medium’s inception in the 1820s.

As early as the 1850s, “ghost photography” rendered pictures that purported to capture unseen, mystical energies and conjure uncanny apparitions, suggesting that the living could commune with the deceased. Photograms and sculptures in the exhibition also reference long-standing art-historical traditions more broadly, ranging from the death mask to depictions of domestic interiors.