James Nicholson Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of large-scale color photography and video by German artist Nathalie Grenzhaeuser. The exhibition will open on February 27, 2004 and continue through March 27, 2004. The opening reception will take place at the gallery on Thursday, March 4, from 5:30-7:30 pm. For this exhibition, Nathalie Grenzhaeuser will present her most recent series Omaha Beach. With this series, Grenzhaeuser explores an oft-visited theme in her work: the intersection of history and memory. Using digital techniques, she seamlessly collages images of the infamous World War II site with landscapes found elsewhere that evoke the physical and psychological wreckage of the D-Day invasion. Eerie scenes of melancholy are created through the fusion of elements such as the terrain of a golf course and the protective fence that keeps tourists from plunging over the edge of the cliffs above Omaha Beach. Although each of Grenzhaeuser’s images goes through a digital reworking process, she considers this to be merely a means of fully capturing her unique responses to the site. The resulting peculiar dream-world is an assemblage of her connections to, interpretations of, and associations with this place that has affected her so completely. Grenzhaeuser’s constructions call to mind the unearthly aura of science fiction films, the fantastical wide-open ranges of wild-west movies, and the formal qualities of 18th and 19th century landscape paintings. The fourteen images that comprise Omaha Beach will be accompanied by a large multi-panel installation and a video projection. Shown in a continuous loop, individual images of the Normandy beach coalesce into an endless journey along the shore where the allies landed on June 6th, 1944. As is the case with her still work, the images in the video projection are a combination of the actual components of the landscape, the history of the site and her personal perceptions of it. While Grenzhaeuser has exhibited extensively in Europe, this show marks her United States debut. Nathalie Grenzhaeuser lives and works in Offenbach and Frankfurt, Germany.