Surface Tension
@ Schneider Gallery
230 West Superior St., Chicago, IL 60654
Opening Friday, July 12th, from 5PM - 7:30PM
On view through Saturday, August 31st
A pliable medium, photography has bent and shaped itself innumerable times to meet the concerns of those working with it; this shifting history makes defining the medium near impossible. In the arts, photography has constantly fought to maintain its status alongside other mediums, particularly painting. However, now that it has gained an equivalent status, the artists employing photography are aggressively reinvestigating it, turning it back onto itself. The work in this exhibition is the product of this reconsideration. Ultimately, the pieces maintain their photographic thread, but they move outward from the expected and alter the photographic plane (through illusion and physical alteration of the surface) into a space where a new dialog can emerge.
Ben Alper culls images from an archive of vernacular photographs which he then modifies via scanning. Intentionally seeking out interference, Alper presents the images with newly introduced glitches, blurring specific narratives and adding a visual reference that is very much of our contemporary moment.
By applying tape and spackle to his paper prior to printing, Daniel Hojnacki sets up his digital inkjet printer for failure. The ink that does adhere to the paper presents the viewer with partial imagery, hints of a memory or fleeting image, which we are then left to decipher. The destruction of the image obliterates any form of photographic immediacy. Honjnacki will be producing a unique installation for this exhibition.
Diane Meyer’s embroidered photographs of Berlin allude to the traditionally feminine craft of cross-stitch, however the pattern—square, color-blocked, rigid—transforms the stitches into a recognizable photographic shape: the over-enlarged pixel. The stacked bricks of pixels also make a secondary reference to the German city, that of the Berlin Wall.
The photographer’s studio plays a critical role in the work of Laura Hart Newlon. A space generally reserved for designing legible imagery, Hart Newlon instead creates scenes where pattern and form collide and complicate the scene. Through photography, she re-presents everyday objects and materials in arrangements that alter the viewer’s experience of the familiar.
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Tags: Ben Alper, Daniel Hojnacki, Diane Meyer, Laura Hart Newlon, River North, Schneider Gallery
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