Wig Heavier Than A Boot: Closing Reception + Gallery Talk
@ Filter Photo
1821 W Hubbard St, Ste 207, Chicago, IL 60622
Opening Thursday, August 13th, from 5PM - 9PM
Filter Photo is pleased to present Wig Heavier Than A Boot, an exhibition bringing together photography by David Johnson and poetry by Philip Matthews. Join us at Filter Space on August 13th for a closing reception with the artists.
In accordance with current health & safety guidelines, entrance to the gallery will be limited to no more than 10 people at a time & timed-entry reservations are required. Please wear a mask for the duration of your visit and practice social distancing from those not in your party. Reserve a timed-entry slot for your visit: https://forms.gle/z1yKgEr3ACYjSsWi7
Filter Photo Director Jennifer Murray will lead a discussion with the artists at 6:30 PM, and Philip will offer one-on-one poetry readings to visitors throughout the night. The talk will be live-streamed on our Instagram for those that are unable to join us in person: https://www.instagram.com/filterphoto/.
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Revealing Petal—a drag persona as whom Philip manifests to write, and David photographs—the project crosses art-making rituals with isolated performances within domestic spaces and pastoral landscapes. Taken together, the resulting photographs and poems reveal dynamic relationships between author, character, and observer. By articulating a specific creative process in which one identity becomes two, the project, in turn, opens up a conversation about gender expression through an art-historical lens.
The photographs provide one record of author and character, blurring art-historical masculine and feminine postures. The poems provide another, which elaborate upon the lived experience of being, modeling, and sometimes, obscuring Petal. Subverting the ekphrastic literary tradition, Philip’s poems do not respond to David’s photographs, nor vice-versa. Both forms are made in the present: as David directs the shoot, Philip makes performance notes that give way to the poem. The photographs capture the blend or distinction between Philip and Petal, and the poems hybridize their perspectives, enacting a relationship that is surreal, empowering, and unbearable, as the project title suggests. What is constant is a sense of a person wanting to belong to the place that hosts them (e.g. farmland in rural Wisconsin, the coast of North Carolina, an art museum in St. Louis, a small church), even or especially when the social norms of that place are felt to ostracize them. Both photographs and poems balance narrative with fragmentation and invite multiple interpretations.
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Tags: Chicago, DAVID JOHNSON, Filter Photo, near west side, PHILIP MATTHEWS, Wig Heavier Than A Boot
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