Featuring: Mary Ellen Bartley, Peter Bialobrzeski, Markus Brunetti, Lucas Foglia, Cig Harvey, Jacqueline Hassink, Erik Madigan Heck, Pieter Hugo,Joshua Lutz, Michael Massaia, Jeffrey Milstein, Zanele Muholi, Christopher Payne, Toshio Shibata, Raïssa Venables.
“Certain photographs possess something indisputably allusive, oblique, and enigmatic. Our most poignant connection to these paradoxical images occupies part of our consciousness away from the bluntness of a direct narrative or incident. In the territory of meditative allusions, the artists in this exhibition convey their subjects without directly unveiling them.
Photography is thriving, but in a different way than before. We used to preserve our treasured paper snapshots in photo albums, but today, smartphone images have become digital ephemera. Incalculable numbers of them are taken only to be forgotten. Photography exhibitions like this give us pause to reconsider the aesthetic grandeur of a printed-out, permanent, archivable image.
In no way a conceptual concern, these rarified images are nothing if not transcendental. They have to be seen to be believed on the scale that the maker intended —seen, shared, and discussed in-person, in a world that has become increasingly virtual and illusory. This discourse, and the way we value the unique purposelessness of allusive representations, is a universal, palpable, celebratory experience.”
Dick Goody, Curator