Michael Vahrenwald

American, b. 1977, Davenport, Iowa; lives and works in New York

The large-scale color photographs of Michael Vahrenwald’s Universal Default series are taken in the desolate, outlying landscapes of newly constructed big box stores across the United States, illuminated only by the glow of parking-lot lights. Vahrenwald faithfully documents these spaces without digital manipulation, using a large-format camera to capture the tactile details. Evidence of man’s hand in the creation and maintenance of these artificial landscapes can be seen in the browning sod, scattered straw, and patterns of a freshly mowed lawn. Such spaces—the undulating berms, sad islands of parking-lot trees, and the indeterminate places that mark the boundary at the property’s edges—exist as a buffer zone between the arterial roadways and the retail structures that increasingly dominate the exurban landscape. As the title indicates, these photographs present a universal phenomenon, a by-product of new retail development. This residual element, a leftover landscape, can be gleaned in an earlier body of work, Vahrenwald’s Corporate Town (2004–2005). The series explored the incongruous juxtapositions of ill-fated modern corporate offices inserted into historic New England communities—the ruins of an experiment in urban renewal. Vahrenwald’s artistic practice has been informed by the work of American photographers of the 1960s and 1970s who examined the new American landscape in a time of political, economic, and cultural crisis. The artist studied photography at Yale University School of Art, where he received his MFA in 2003. His work has been exhibited at such venues as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Mary Boone Gallery, New York; Galerie Alain LeGalliard, Paris; and D’Amelio Terras Gallery, New York.