Michella Bredahl ‘Unmade Beds’
November 4 – November 25, 2023
Michella Bredahl, Klara on a couch, 2019, Gelatin silver print on Kodak Endura N paper, 37 x 50 in (94 x 127 cm), Edition 1 of 3
Shoot the Lobster is pleased to present Unmade beds, Michella Bredahl’s first solo exhibition in New York.
Michella Bredahl’s photographic impulse began at the age of seven, when she was gifted a camera by her mother. Their apartment became a refuge for the adolescent’s creative explorations, as she documented their shared domestic life. Bredahl spent her early days cataloging the mundane, beautiful, and devastating in equal measure, which has come to inform her practice in the decades since. Despite the passage of time, Bredahl still upholds that same predilection for interiors, though her subject matter has exploded into a wide array of friends and collaborators. She works against idealism, instead orienting her practice around honesty and a human framework. Her subjects thus bear no frills, participating in the documentation of unfettered moments.
Bredahl is self-motivated in her understanding of history, having grown up without access to art, she is consigned to her own impulses. In her early 20s, she plumbed the internet for information, uncovering the annals that her own work falls in alignment with. The films of Chantal Akerman are a mainstay within her inspirational database, moved as Bredahl is by the late filmmaker’s candor and ability to puncture the veneer between surveyor and surveyed. Just like Akerman, Bredahl refuses to take her architectures for granted. The person – or people – in these rooms are inextricably bound to their contexts. The two artists also harmonize through the similar axes upon which their women rotate. As suggested by the title of Bredahl’s exhibition, Unmade beds, there is the sense that her subjects are without filtration systems, their trust instilled in the photographer to document with truth at the fore.
The artist would like to thank the following collaborators: Ras Bartram, Julie Beauchamps, Billie Blain, Isis Fleischer, Flexotika, Thamin Guillaume, Klara Kristin, Krystyna Mazurówna, Akeem Smith, and Vic Carmen Sonne. Production was completed at Diamantino Labo Photo.
And many thanks to Alex Berns.
Funded by Statens Kunstfond
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