Yancey Richardson Gallery is pleased to present Walls, Surfaces, Illusions, a selection of celebrated photographs by Lisa Kereszi. Frequently exploring venues offering escapism through cheap entertainment and sordid pleasure, Kereszi’s photographs emphasize the details that lift the veil between fantasy and reality. With an acute awareness of the oblique, she peels back the illusionism of these forgotten spaces on the cultural fringe - an abandoned arcade, a run-down amusement park, a strip club on the outskirts of town - revealing the disenchantment and melancholy behind their once-alluring facades.

Keresziʼs photographs are not planned, but rather genuine, instinctive responses to a strange and secret type of beauty. Distressed signage, antiquated murals, glimpses through reflections - they are exercises in magical realism, and a celebration of the spontaneous photographic image. The daughter of a junkyard proprietor, she embraces the aesthetics of decay, finding treasure in the detritus, the left behind, the visual clue that reveals something about a once happier life that unfolded in the space she discovers.

Lisa Kereszi (b. 1973) received her MFA from Yale University in 2000. In 2003, the Public Art Fund of New York commissioned her to photograph the reclaimed Governors Island, resulting in a show at the Municipal Art Society and Mayor Bloomberg's offices. She was awarded the Baum Award for Best Emerging American Photographer in 2005, and four monographs of her work have been published: Governors Island (2005 with Andrew Moore), Fantasies (2008), Fun and Games (2009), and Joeʼs Junk Yard (2012). Her work is in numerous public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and many others. She is currently a Lecturer, Critic and Acting Director of Undergraduate Studies in Photography at Yale University.