wall space gallery | the flat file

David Myers – Confined Visual Synonyms

The Flat File — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:29:12 +0000

David Myers is a Washington DC based artist and his newest series, Confined: Visual Synonyms opens this week at Hillyer Art Space on February 3rd. David has a diverse portfolio of images, and always creates a body of work that is visually striking and emotionally impactful. I have seen many of his images in black + white, but this series, in vibrant rich color on contained wildlife, is a visual treat. Contained wildlife… is that an oxymoron, or purely the conflict and burden we carry when we think of zoos and aquariums? David’s series seduces us into the beauty of the surroundings, until we take a second look at scale, at the tension, boundaries of not only the zoo confines, but the darkness that surrounds us as we become voyeurs looking into the cages. I think we all carry this conflict with us, knowing that we want these animals ultimately to be free, yet without these living museums, many of these creatures we would never see. David’s work is without judgement, it is not crafted into a romantic, nor harsh vision of treatment or ethics. It is a illustrative document, for all of us to bring our own conflicts about the subject, and make our own decisions.

If you are in DC on Friday, please stop in, say hello to David for me, and take a look at this beautiful series of images.

Confined

Polar Bear

Coon

Tiger

Orangutan

Boar

Penquins

Jelly

Observations – Time + Place

The Flat File — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:00:47 +0000

Two Santa Barbara based artists, Jesse Alexander and Patricia Houghton Clarke struck up a friendship over a mutual love of photography. Both had traveled extensively, both had a love of immersing themselves in the communities they traveled to and both take deeply personal images that communicate the beautiful and complex worlds they inhabit.

Victoria Station - Jesse Alexander

Friedrichstrasse - Patricia Houghton Clarke

Opening on Thursday February 2nd, at Gallery 27 in Santa Barbara, these two artists celebrate their connection to the world with all of us.

Jesse Alexander -

London in the 60′s. Jesse is synonymous with Motorsports. He spent time in Monaco photographing the Grand Prix for major magazines, Car & Driver, Road & Track and Newsweek among many. In Observations, he turns his lens on two unique views of London. In his series House of Pow, Jesse looks at a unique sporting club focused on boxing. Shot in color and black and white, these images bring us down to the mat. We can see the smoke, smell the sweat, and taste the champagne and cigars.

Punch

In Alexander’s other featured series, Billingsgate, the portraits of the workers and purveyors of the Fish Market come alive.

Blinky

Patricia Houghton Clarke -

As an observer of life and communities of the world, Patricia focuses her camera on the intimate details of daily life and our connection to our surroundings. Working with multiple cameras, film, digital and toy Clarke captures the essence of place. In Observations, we see three unique visions, three unique places. We see the structure of Berlin, the passion of a small town in Italy and a very personal vision of Asia.

Senso - Ji

Twi-Light, Berlin

Uccia, Italy

ND12 – William Miller

The Flat File — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:00:13 +0000

William Miller’s Ruined Polaroids are the perfect way to cap off our series on Crossing Territories. Bill’s colorful Rorschach tests, in my eyes seem an homage to Rothko. In scanning and enlarging the image, the damaged, light leaked, tortured SX70 takes on other worldly shapes. Best part? He scans the border and base of the polaroid, so it is a complete portrait of something gone bad so well. I love these prints, they make me smile and brighten my day when I walk by them in the gallery.

From Bill’s artist statement -

With its first use I realized the camera wasn’t functioning properly. It sometimes spills out two pictures at a time and the film often gets stuck in the gears, exposing and mangling the images in unpredictable ways. Over time I’ve figured out how to control and accentuate aspects of the camera’s flaws but the images themselves are always a surprise. Each one is determined by the idiosyncrasies of the film and the camera.

This project, Ruined Polaroids, is an unintended exploration into the three-dimensional physical character of an antiquated photographic medium that touches on subjects from the artistic value of chance, to questions of what constitutes a photograph. I say unintended because what I’m focusing on here is a technological anomaly. The failure of a process.

Ruined Polaroid No.40

Ruined Polaroid No. 50

Ruined Polaroid No. 47

Ruined Polaroid No. 51

Ruined Polaroid No. 45

ND12 – S. Gayle Stevens

The Flat File — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 17:00:14 +0000

Gayle Stevens work is gripping, intense, creative and totally unexpected. Her wet plate collodion prints are so far away from expectation that I can’t stop looking at them. I was thrilled to have her be part of Crossing Territories. After meeting her in New Orleans at PhotoNola, and seeing her rich delicious images, I anxiously awaited the box. Like a child at Christmas, I unwrapped the print and got it up on the wall.

Take a look.

From Gayle’s Artist Statement -

The Calligraphy series is composed of single and multiple five inch square plates displayed in the style of 19^th century specimens and housed in black wood shadow box frames. This collection will be displayed as my personal museum of specimens collected on my daily walks. These images are my memento mori; an acknowledgement of lives passed, a rendering of fleeting shadows.

Blow II

When the Bough Breaks

Beneath My Feet

Through my Looking GlassWideness of the Sea

ND12 – Odette England

The Flat File — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:39:01 +0000

Odette’s lovely, quiet small images hang on the walls of the gallery in Crossing Territories. Photograph as story, as object. In her series, Photos of Me without Me, Odette scissors herself out of the image, then re-seams the print together. These small objects, one of a kinds, resonate within all of us. Snapshots, memories, become almost more romantic, and memorable with passage of time, and our realities often fall into fantasy. I think we have all taken ourselves out of images, if not literally, figuratively speaking. Odette manages to have us join in on her journey, yet insert ourselves into her world, and craft our own memories as a result.

From Odette’s Artist Statement -

Home is the center weight of my work. Memory and forgetting are the counterbalances. I use the past, the expired, to create intimate experiences of the risk involved in what it means to be home, love home, leave home. My photographs are fragile, contemplative, temporal spaces; fantasy paths once trodden that yearn to be retraced, inscriptions of
‘then’, ‘now’. The evolving, revolving door of home is where I use photography to treat memory as I will my daughter: I must nurture her, watch her mature; then let her go.

Without Me 3

Without Me 27

Without Me 9

Without Me 8

Without Me 6

Without Me 34

ND12 – Danielle Dean Palmer

The Flat File — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:29:36 +0000

Crossing Territories artist Danielle Dean Palmer creates beautiful objects. Her diptych, May 1st is a lovely, quiet view of spring. Her photographs, adhered to board, with encaustic and paint create a window to a daydream. Especially in winter, these first moments of spring, small buds and leaves on branches make us crave longer days, warmer temperatures and turning our faces into the sun. Her ethereal creations come in many sizes, and now she is working with incorporating light sources into the work. These one of a kind works make photography dimensional, unique and collectible.

From Danielle’s artist statement -

Danielle Dean Palmer’s work depicts a world between times. She uses a blend of old and new image making techniques to reveal a primal and personal vision of nature in its most elemental form. Her elegant compositions are evocative of specimens collected from a memory of encounter, an experience of something eternal and inextricably of us. They are works of discovery unveiled with a subtle lens.

May 1st

May 3rd

St Mark's Square I

St. Mark's Square II

ND12 – Norihisa Hosaka

The Flat File — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:04:22 +0000

Burning Chrome. Norihisa Hosaka, part of Crossing Territories, created a world visually reminiscent of the film Blade Runner, with bright lights and a vision of a restless society in his native Japan. His technique, using HDR, highlights this super real, almost science fiction reality. Not just a study of place, these landscapes show the motion of people, of who has transited this place, seemingly immune to what is around them.

From Hosaka’s statement -

I am currently taking landscape photographs of Tokyo under my favorite theme, “Retrospective Luminescence.”

In the 80’s, key word in cultural movement was Cyberpunk; the 21st century near-future Tokyo viewed in movies, literature and music. The chaotic image of Cyberpunk Tokyo has become a fixture by the 90′s. [2]
Today, the image of near-future Japan created three decades ago, Cyberpunk Tokyo, seems somewhat a nostalgic reminiscence and has become one of the fictitious histories of Tokyo.

We realize that Tokyo has not become the cyberpunk city we often seen in the films. However, I feel a possibility of Tokyo and Japan becoming something we have envisioned in the 80′s. I want to take photographs of not now, not the past, and not the future but of a mixed timeline.

DECAY of LIGHTS: Shinjuku Yunika Vision

DECAY of LIGHTS: Shibuya Tsutaya

DECAY of LIGHTS: Shinjuku FUSA's

DECAY of LIGHTS: Ginza Ring Cube

DECAY of LIGHTS: Shinjuku Frente

ND12 – Greer Muldowney

The Flat File — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:00:02 +0000

We focus on size today, and the ability to fill a frame. Crossing Territories artist Greer Muldowney has managed to convey significant size in a small package. The boundaries in her images not only look at constricting space, its also about how we constrain people as well. The images in her series, 6,426 per km², Greer looks at how we create density in a small space, in this case Hong Kong. Her work is vibrant, structural, and highly detailed. The best part is the images don’t take up an entire wall to make the point. At 20×24 inches, she has managed to give us the feeling we are standing on a curb looking into these structures.

from her artist statement -

At 6,426 people per km², Hong Kong boasts the most densely populated urban center in the world. The reality of sustainable practices, depletion of resources and a shifting global power paradigm pervade media involving China, and its Western syndicate territory, Hong Kong. By making imagery here, I ask viewers to contemplate these issues, but to also see these places as homes; not statistics. As the living cities and infrastructure that address cultural standards and progressive technologies. These photographs do not propose a reality so different from the spin of contemporary media, but asks an audience on the other side of the world, the Western world, to reflect on whether these images provide a surrogate for wonderment or trepidation for a changing global climate and future.

Kwai HIng

Cheung Sha Wan #2

Cheung Sha Wan

Aberdeen

Lai Chi Kok

ND12 – Heidi Kirkpatrick

The Flat File — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:00:08 +0000

Heidi Kirkpatrick is a force of nature.

I have been a fan for a very long time, and when the opportunity availed itself with her inclusion in Crossing Territories, I was thrilled to have her work hang here in the gallery. Her complex detailed images, full of symbolism yet open for interpretation, are a feast for the eyes. So much to play with, participate in, its always hard to decide on selecting just one to hold in your hand.

Her work takes common objects and breathes into them new life. Her use of the female form, in all their beautiful curvy shapes, gives softness to structure, sensuousness to hard edged specimens. Found objects, like mint tins, silk boxes, cigar, cigarette and souvenir containers, all become handcrafted works of art. It is a playful way to showcase her work, as well as a way to transcend what a photograph is and how we perceive showing photographs.

From Heidi’s artist statement -

I am in love with film. All of my work is made with film. I shoot on film. I print on film. I do all of my own work in my darkroom. I like it dripping off my elbows. I do not use a lot of fancy equipment. My “models” are the people who are closest to me, my family and friends. I love layering the film positives over anything and everything I can think of or find. My studio is filled with found objects that inspire me, and photographs, lots and lots of photographs.
I often use photographs to transform these found objects into pieces of art…..

I also live with a substantial amount of physical pain and have for many years. In my continual search for an answer, as well as my way of dealing with the unexplained, I dissect my copy of Gray’s Anatomy. The pages find their way into my work, layered under images of those closest to me. The illustrations bind, clothe and wrap the body. Putting the inside on the outside, I wear my heart on my sleeve.

Reminiscent of nineteenth century cased images and tintypes; Specimens are housed in small hinged tins that open and close to reveal or conceal the secrets they hold. Plates are made in sixth plate size on copper that has been finessed with fire creating patterns similar to collodion pour lines of vintage tintypes. These works depart from the frame as they are arranged on a table top or a shelf, often stacked or placed side by side to reveal narratives of family life or the complexities of the feminine allure while drawing on memories, contemporary issues, and visual formality.

For Fredrick

Reveal

shattered

cord

exposed

ND12 – Brook Reynolds

The Flat File — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:16:05 +0000

Brook Reynolds, part of Crossing Territories, has images that are seductive, introspective and gorgeous to look at. Her striking gelatin silver prints are full of great contrast, rich blacks, details in the shadows. Technically stunning, these images are also introspective, quiet, and allow us as viewers to fall into the organic shape and lose ourselves.

Taking simple inconsequential objects, Brooke makes them important and unordinary.

From her artist statement -

Enso photographs are created by the process of combining slow exposures with motion, and inspired by the practice of Soto Zen Buddhism. Enso is the Japanese word for circle, and is a Zen symbol for the endless interconnectedness and impermanence of all life. According to a Japanese story from the 8th Century, the Zen Master Kyozan created the first enso painting in response to a monk’s request for a gatha, a written poem or statement, expressing enlightenment and said, “Thinking about this and then understanding it is second best; not thinking about it and understanding it is third best.” He did not say what is first best.

We show only five images here, based on her submission to New Directions, but take a look at her website to see more of these beautiful images.

Human Hair Enso

Petrified Wood Enso

Snake Skin Enso

Razor Clam Enso

Wild Rose Enso