fau presents the photo-based art exhibition ‘altarations...

DOROTHY F. SCHMIDT COLLEGE OF ARTS AND LETTERS

School of the Arts University Galleries

777 Glades Road Boca Raton, FL 33431

tel: 561.297.2966 fax: 561.297.2166

www.fau.edu/galleries

MEDIA CONTACT: Polly Burks 561-297-2595, [email protected]

HIGH RES IMAGE CONTACT: Mariela Acuna

561-297-2661, [email protected]

FAU Presents the Photo-based Art Exhibition ‘Altarations: Built, Blended, Processed’

BOCA RATON, FLA. (October 1, 2014) – The University Galleries in Florida Atlantic University’s Dorothy F.

Schmidt College of Arts and Letters will present “Altarations: Built, Blended, Processed,” an exhibition of photo-based art,

in both of its galleries in late 2014 and early 2015. The first half of the exhibition will open in the Schmidt Center Gallery on

Thursday, Nov. 20, and the second half will open in the Ritter Art Gallery on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2015. Both galleries are

located at 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton campus.

“Altarations: Built, Blended, Processed” presents works by more than 20 contemporary artists. Most of the artists

live and work throughout the United States while a few reside in other countries including Israel, Denmark and Peru. While

hardly unified in style and content, the artists’ works in “Altarations” blend photographic images and processes to produce

works that celebrate, contradict and undermine photographic traditions through altered images and references. The title of the

exhibition is derived from Mark C. Taylor’s “Altarity,” a 1987 book of philosopher Taylor’s writing that brings together his

interpretation and synthesis of several modern philosophers’ interpretations of difference and otherness.

The artists included in the exhibition employ practices that simultaneously subvert photographic traditions while

also employing the medium’s salient characteristics that revolve around the physics of light and light sensitive chemistries,

some of which use this property to relate and respond to digital image making technologies. While some are dubious and

work against computer-mediated imaging and printing techniques, many of the artists in “Altarations” employ and fully

embrace digital image-making processes. In addition, several of the photographers are also painters and their work in the

exhibition employs processes akin to photography such as scanning, the much older process of hand-made collage, and in one

case, painting abstractly over old family snapshots. Stylistically, the artists use or reference to formal or geometric abstraction

unifies their work in this exhibition.

While the exhibition’s title refers to altering photographic images, a ubiquitous practice in our image-saturated

culture, the photo-based art in the exhibition has a much more narrow focus than the work of artists who manipulate

photographs. The exhibition focuses on artists whose photo-based works are strategically built through combining, blending

and processing images that strongly veer toward formal abstraction while also systematically doubling down on visual and

social aspects of contemporary image-making technologies and phenomena. The works in “Altarations” reflect on

contemporary image making, consumption and proliferation as well as how the latter seemingly permeates every corner of

contemporary life.

The exhibition was selected by co-curators W. Rod Faulds, director of FAU’s University Galleries, and Jeanie

Giebel, FAU Bachelor of Fine Arts graduate (2013), who is currently a curatorial assistant at the Margulies Collection in

Miami. Both will contribute essays to a catalogue to be published to document the exhibition. The “Altarations” catalogue

will also include an essay by Heather Diack, assistant professor of art history from the University of Miami, who is an expert

in conceptual art and the history of photography.

The curators admit that “Altarations” is influenced by recent exhibitions in New York that have resonance

internationally in contemporary art and photographic circles. These exhibitions include “What is A Photograph?” and “A

World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio” at the International Center of Photography (ICP) and the Museum of

Modern Art (MoMA) respectively. While narrower in scope than both of these exhibitions “Altarations” is like no other

photography exhibition presented at South Florida museums or university galleries in recent memory.

The first part of the exhibition will open in the Schmidt Center Gallery on Thursday, Nov. 20 with a 7 p.m. lecture

by participating Miami artist Maria Martinez-Cañas. Cañas is one of five artists in the exhibition that co-curator Faulds

considers to be historical rudders for the rest of the exhibition. The other artists, James Welling, Ellen Carey, Barbara Kasten

and Penelope Umbrico, have created precedent setting work for more than 20 years. Whether or not their works influenced or

are even known by the mostly younger artists in the exhibition, their works provide a strong example of the themes and

sensibilities running throughout the exhibition’s diverse abstract works.

The second part of the exhibition will open in the Ritter Art Gallery on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2015 with a public

opening event to be followed by additional public programs featuring several exhibiting artists. These programs will be

announced by December.

The University Galleries at FAU are free and open to the public Tuesdays through Fridays, from 1 to 4 p.m., and

Saturdays from 1 to 5 p.m. Group and class tours are welcome during public hours as well as at other times scheduled by

appointment. Gallery exhibitions are sponsored by the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County. For more information, call

561-297-2661, email [email protected] or visit www.fau.edu/galleries.

- FAU-

About Florida Atlantic University: Florida Atlantic University, established in 1961, officially opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, the University, with an annual economic impact of $6.3 billion, serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students at sites throughout its six-county service region in southeast Florida. FAU’s world-class teaching and research faculty serves students through 10 colleges: the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, the College of Business, the College for Design and Social Inquiry, the College of Education, the College of Engineering and Computer Science, the Graduate College, the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine, the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing and the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. FAU is ranked as a High Research Activity institution by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The University is placing special focus on the rapid development of three signature themes – marine and coastal issues, biotechnology and contemporary societal challenges – which provide opportunities for faculty and students to build upon FAU’s existing strengths in research and scholarship. For more information, visit www.fau.edu.

University GalleriesFlorida Atlantic University, Boca Raton

Altarations: Built, Blended, ProcessedNovember 2014 – March 2015

Altarations: Built, Blended, Processed is an exhibition featuring contemporary artists that blend photographic images and processes to produce works that celebrate, contradict and undermine photographic traditions through altered images and references. The title of the exhibition, Altarations, is derived from Mark C. Taylor’s Altarity – an anthology of Taylor’s writing that brings together his interpretation and synthesis of modern philosophies in analytical discussions of difference and otherness. The exhibition recalls the alternative photography movement of the 1970s and the earlier examples of advanced visual artists who employed photographic imagery such as Robert Rauschenberg, John Baldessari and Martha Rosler among many others who have used photography to consciously step outside the confines of naturalistic or illusionistic representation.

The artists included in Altarations continue practices that simultaneously subvert photographic traditionswhile also employing the medium’s salient characteristics that revolve around the physics of light and lightsensitive chemistries. These artists of course also relate and respond to digital image-making technologies. While some are dubious and work against computer-mediated imaging and printing techniques, many of the artists in Altarations employ and fully embrace digital image-making processes.

Altarations: Built, Blended, Processed has a much narrower focus than artists who manipulate photographic images. The exhibition focuses upon artists whose photo-based works are strategically built through combining, blending and processing images that strongly veer towards formal abstraction while also systematically doubling down on visual and social aspects of contemporary image making technologies and phenomena. The works in Altarations reflect on contemporary image making, consumption and proliferation as well as how the latter seemingly permeates every corner of contemporary life.

The Altarations exhibition further prioritizes the static photo-based image, forcing a closer comparison topainting and other traditional art image-making practices. While more than a few of the artists employ andinvestigate the moving image through film and video in some of their works, Altarations focuses on staticimages to examine how contemporary photo-based art mimics, questions and parallels practices in currentart, particularly abstract painting, while also equally mining and reflecting photography’s art history(s).

A notable aspect of today’s manipulated image-making featured in Altarations is that the works often sharea “look” not unlike the alternative photography of the 1970s. The philosophies of that earlier, primarilyphotographic movement, promoted a new vision for the role of the photographic image, a philosophy railingagainst both a popular snapshot generation and the then prominent photographic art that was narrowly bent on truth, beauty and tonal values, mostly in what we today call gray scale. That alternative philosophy seems not far off the sentiments of artists in Altarations and many others who question and confound digital image proliferation while simultaneously longing for the seeming purity of analogue photography’s relationship to light and chemical processes.

Altarations also features works that demonstrate and perhaps help us understand what might be an intrinsic desire to transform reality-based images. The artists in the exhibition insert their hand into the picture plane of the photographic image by digitally or physically altering the image through additive and subtractive approaches to build and process their own spaces. The exhibition aims to challenge viewer’s understandings of photographic language by presenting a select group of exemplary contemporary artists whose core practice involves photography and acknowledges the post digital age currently affecting the photographic medium if not most every aspect our lives.

Finally, Altarations admits and plays off the curators’ awareness of recent exhibitions in New York andAmerica that have resonance in contemporary art and photographic circles. Specifically, the complimentaryexhibitions What is A Photograph? and A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio at the International Center of Photography (ICP) and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), respectively, presentedhistorical precedents and contemporary practitioners whose works often exhibit alternative methods andphilosophies shared with artists in Altarations. The proposed exhibition also has relatives in exhibitions like

University GalleriesFlorida Atlantic University, Boca Raton

Altarations: Built, Blended, ProcessedNovember 2014 – March 2015

the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Garden’s Second Nature: Abstract Photography Then and Now(2012/13) and Altered Appropriations: Making Strange (2010) at Chapman University’s Guggenheim Gallery(Orange County, CA). An exhibition like these and Altarations has not appeared in a South Florida/Miamiregion museum or university gallery.

Other exhibitions at the previously mentioned New York institutions, namely the annual New Photography atMoMA and the ICPs Triennial series, have influenced our inclusions as much as our exclusions, particularlywhen we felt an artist’s work had reached a point of overexposure. Altarations will include only a few ofthese more recognized artists whose work has been seen in the aforementioned exhibitions/venues alongwith a few earlier practitioners of the exhibition’s described tendencies who are still actively producingcompelling work. Perhaps most importantly, Altarations also presents lesser-known artists, some may seemtangential to these by now codified alternative practices, as a way to indicate yet other alternatives. Such ablend of artists seems a very reasonable, if not the best way to educate, engage and hopefully even agitateour audience of art students and the wider art-interested public of our five-county South Florida region abouta narrow but important slice of today’s ever present photo-based art.

Altarations is co-curated by University Galleries’ director W. Rod Faulds, a curator, exhibition designer andeducator along with recent FAU graduate, Jeanie Giebel, who is currently a curatorial intern at the MarguilesCollection, Miami. The project includes a catalogue with texts by the co-curators and Heather Diack,associate professor of Art History, University of Miami. The catalogue will be produced after the exhibitionopens to include installation views of the exhibition and documentation of visiting artists and associatedpublic programs. The exhibition will be presented in the University Galleries’ three exhibition spaces. – Schmidt Center Gallery & Public Space: November 20, 2014 through February 28, 2015 – Ritter Art Gallery: January 15 through February 28, 2015

About The University Galleries, FAUwww.fau.edu/galleries

Over the last decade and more, the University Galleries at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) have producednumerous thematically based exhibitions largely borrowed from artists and galleries in New York City andcollections in Miami/South Florida. Many of these exhibitions have been produced in association with guestcurators. Beginning in 2000, some of those exhibitions include:

POUR – www.fau.edu/galleries/pour.phpDelicatessen – www.fau.edu/galleries/deli_exhibition.phpMe, Myself & I – www.fau.edu/galleries/memyself.phpNatural Histories – www.fau.edu/galleries/catsbynaturalhistory.phpNeverNeverLand – www.fau.edu/galleries/neverneverland.php

In addition the University Galleries have consistently presented innovative contemporary art produced insoutheast Florida and the southeastern region of the U.S. through frequent presentation of the

South Florida Cultural Consortium Visual and Media Artists Fellowship Exhibition (2001, 2006, 2009 & 2012) www.fau.edu/galleries/SoFLoCo09.php ; and, the University Galleries’ every three years exhibition southXeast: Contemporary Southeastern Art (2005, 2008, 2011, 2014)www.fau.edu/galleries/2011southXeast.php

About Rod Fauldswww.wrodfaulds.com

Schmidt Center GalleryNovember 21, 2014 – February 28, 2015Altarations: Built, Blended, Processed

Selected Artwork Image Sheet

University GalleriesSchool of the ArtsDorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters561.297.2661 • www.fau.edu/galleries

Ilit AzoulayBorn 1972, IsraelLives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel

Room #8, Wall no. 3, 2011

archival pigment print, 59 x 98 inchesCourtesy of the artist and Andrea Meislin Gallery, New YorkHigh-resolution image available upon request

Ellen CareyBorn 1952, Buffalo, NYLives and works in Hartford, CT

Dings and Shadows: Multicolor, 2014color photograms-unique, 96 x 30 inchesCollection of the artist and courtesy ofJayne H. Baum Gallery, New York, NYHigh-resolution image available upon request

Lisa Gwilliam & Ray Sweeten (DataSpaceTime)Ray Sweeten: Born 1975Lives and works in Brooklyn, NYLisa Gwilliam:Born 1973Lives and works in Brookly, NY

Finite Field A, 2014

C-print on aluminum, 43 x 38.5 inches Courtesy the artists and Microscope Gallery, New YorkHigh-resolution image available upon request

Barbara KastenBorn 1936, Chicago, ILLives and works in Chicago, IL

Scene IX, 2012archival pigment print, 54.5 x 43.5 inchesCourtesy of the artist and the Bortolami Gallery, New YorkHigh-resolution image available upon request




Maria Martinez-CañasBorn 1960, Havana, CubaLives and Works in Miami, FL

Bunker Series, Untitled001, 2013archival pigment prints, collage + watercolor on arches aquarelle 310gms paper, 34 x 44 inchesCourtesy of the artist Julie Saul Gallery, New YorkHigh-resolution image available upon request

Matthew PorterBorn 1975, State College, PALIves and works in Brooklyn, NY

This is Tomorrow, 2013archival pigment print, 57 x 46.5 inchesCourtesy of the artist, Invisible Exports, New York High-resolution image available upon request

Hugh Scott-Douglas Born 1988, Cambridge, United KingdomLives and works in Brooklyn, NY

Untitled, 2014UV curable ink on wood panel , 80 x 53 inchesCourtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco

Eileen QuinlanBorn 1972, Boston, MALives and works in Brooklyn, NY

Hildegaard, 2012chromogenic print, 40 x 30 inchesCourtesy of the artist and Miguel Abreu Gallery, New YorkHigh-resolution image available upon request




James WellingBorn 1951, Hartford, ConnecticutLives and works in Los Angeles, CA

Torso 1-18, 2005-2008C-print , 52.6 x 40.5 inchesCourtesy of the artist and David Zwirner, New York/London

Penelope UmbricoBorn 1957, Philadelphia, PALives and works in Brooklyn, NY

22,653,725 Suns from Sunsets from Flickr

(Partial) 9/17/2014 (detail), 20144 x 6 inch machine C-printsCourtesy of the artist; LMAK Projects, New York; and Mark Moore Gallery, Los AngelesHigh-resolution image available upon request

Ritter Art GalleryJanuary 15 – February 28, 2015

Altarations: Built, Blended, ProcessedSelected Artwork Image Sheet


Erica BaumBorn 1961, New York, NYLives and works in New York, NY

Session Wavy Miami Street, 2013two framed archival pigment prints, three engineering bond posters, 49 x 64 inchesCourtesy of the artist and Bureau, New YorkHigh-resolution image available upon request

Jibade-Khalil HuffmanBorn 1981, Detroit, MILives and works in Los Angeles, CA

LLL3, 2013archival inkjet print, 24 x 36 inches Courtesy of the artist

Yamini NayarBorn 1975, Rochester, NYLives and works in Brooklyn, NY

One of These Days, 2009C-print, 36 x 48 inchesCourtesy of the artist and Thomas Erben Gallery, New York

Asbjørn SkouBorn 1984, Copenhagen, DenmarkLives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark

Untitled (A Hole Through the Future) 11, 2013laser print, Xerox copy on cardstock, 27 x 19 inchesCourtesy of the artist and Munch Gallery, New York High-resolution image available upon request

Ritter Art GalleryJanuary 15 – February 28, 2015

Altarations: Built, Blended, ProcessedSelected Artwork Image Sheet


Ishmael Randall WeeksBorn 1976, Cusco, PeruLives and works in Brooklyn, NY and Lima, Peru

Techo (Nuevo Mundo S.), 2012acrylic and photo transfer drawing with cut-out mounted on paper, 8.0625 x 6 inches Courtesy of the artist and Eleven Rivington, New YorkHigh-resolution image available upon request

John MannBorn 1972, Charlottesville, VALives and works in Tallahassee, FL

Untitled, 2013pigment print, 50 x 40 inchesCourtesy of the artist and Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New YorkHigh resolution image available upon request

Hannah WhittakerBorn 1980, Washington D.C., MDLives and works in New York. NY

Ship of Theseus, 2014archival pigment printsCourtesy of the artist and M+B Gallery, Los Angeles

Jennifer WilliamsBorn 1972, South West, PALives and works in New York, NY

[Flo#7] BoweryHouston - Avalon Chrystie to Bowery Hotel, 2011archival pigment print, 17 x 22 inchesCourtesy of the artist and Robert Mann Gallery, New YorkHigh-resolution image available upon request

fau presents the photo-based art exhibition ‘altarations...

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