Andrea Longacre-White
03 Apr - 02 May 2010
ANDREA LONGACRE-WHITE
“Dark Current”
April 3rd– May 2nd, 2010
@ RENTAL, NEW YORK, NY
RECEPTION: Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 6-8PM
Rental Gallery hosts Dark Current, the debut solo exhibition of new work by Andrea Longacre-White. The opening reception will be held Saturday April 3rd from 6-8pm. The exhibition will remain on view through May 2nd.
The images depart from the breakdown of vision; beginning with lowres stock images, which then circulate in the artist’s studio, stacking and wearing as Longacre-White re-photographs and re-prints them.
It’s nearly impossible to locate the “content” of the photographs. The images in Dark Current are the exhibition stage in an examination and visualization of the means of photography—light reflected and absorbed by paper surfaces. The images appear as suspended luminescent panels with light motifs and bubbling, indistinguishable forms. Elsewhere, flashbulb flares reveal hidden foregrounds, and bounce between parallel planes; surfaces curl forward into view or combine without weight or measurable dimension at surprising junctures. Light and texture appear in high contrast: the overwhelming effect is of material pushing against the flat pictorial surface.
The title, Dark Current, is a technical term used in digital photography, part of the camera’s signal-to-noise ratio, which is a factor in distilling imagery into digital content, and thus a source of irregularity and distortion. The term can be extrapolated to signify the feedback created when any information is inputted into a technology and exceeds output. Longacre-White uses the term to refer to the surprises in her compositions, which demonstrate new possibilities for the machines she employs.
The camera is deployed as one such machine. The artist’s “black-out” pictures are instances where the artist’s speed, enabled by the digital format, exceeded the flash’s recycling time, resulting in a failure of the flashbulb to go off. These entirely dark images are in-between pictures that refuse the purity of the monochrome. The second machine is the critical apparatus of abstract photography. Varying but generally monumental in size, the images here begin with the selfcritical faculties of abstract photography, from the objecthood, the desire, and the eminent contingency of the photographic image.
Longacre-White enthusiastically looks to examine the strands of genre photography embedded in the image alongside its conceptual agenda, among them the eccentric historical forms of landscape and architectural photography.
Longacre-White leaves a number of her photographs mounted flush to aluminum but uncovered by glass to emphasize the contrast of the image’s folds and contours with its support; it’s a failed attempt to “tame” the photograph. Other images are left unframed so that in installation they curl against the wall. The procedure opens the dark, immersive surfaces to a reenactment of the artist’s studio process, where pictures stack and get stepped on, or are left out to collect dirt.
Referencing the art object’s necessary relationship to sculpture, the artist opens the photographic surface to the experience of its duration, one fraught with the inconsistency of anecdote.
—Alex Gartenfeld
“Dark Current”
April 3rd– May 2nd, 2010
@ RENTAL, NEW YORK, NY
RECEPTION: Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 6-8PM
Rental Gallery hosts Dark Current, the debut solo exhibition of new work by Andrea Longacre-White. The opening reception will be held Saturday April 3rd from 6-8pm. The exhibition will remain on view through May 2nd.
The images depart from the breakdown of vision; beginning with lowres stock images, which then circulate in the artist’s studio, stacking and wearing as Longacre-White re-photographs and re-prints them.
It’s nearly impossible to locate the “content” of the photographs. The images in Dark Current are the exhibition stage in an examination and visualization of the means of photography—light reflected and absorbed by paper surfaces. The images appear as suspended luminescent panels with light motifs and bubbling, indistinguishable forms. Elsewhere, flashbulb flares reveal hidden foregrounds, and bounce between parallel planes; surfaces curl forward into view or combine without weight or measurable dimension at surprising junctures. Light and texture appear in high contrast: the overwhelming effect is of material pushing against the flat pictorial surface.
The title, Dark Current, is a technical term used in digital photography, part of the camera’s signal-to-noise ratio, which is a factor in distilling imagery into digital content, and thus a source of irregularity and distortion. The term can be extrapolated to signify the feedback created when any information is inputted into a technology and exceeds output. Longacre-White uses the term to refer to the surprises in her compositions, which demonstrate new possibilities for the machines she employs.
The camera is deployed as one such machine. The artist’s “black-out” pictures are instances where the artist’s speed, enabled by the digital format, exceeded the flash’s recycling time, resulting in a failure of the flashbulb to go off. These entirely dark images are in-between pictures that refuse the purity of the monochrome. The second machine is the critical apparatus of abstract photography. Varying but generally monumental in size, the images here begin with the selfcritical faculties of abstract photography, from the objecthood, the desire, and the eminent contingency of the photographic image.
Longacre-White enthusiastically looks to examine the strands of genre photography embedded in the image alongside its conceptual agenda, among them the eccentric historical forms of landscape and architectural photography.
Longacre-White leaves a number of her photographs mounted flush to aluminum but uncovered by glass to emphasize the contrast of the image’s folds and contours with its support; it’s a failed attempt to “tame” the photograph. Other images are left unframed so that in installation they curl against the wall. The procedure opens the dark, immersive surfaces to a reenactment of the artist’s studio process, where pictures stack and get stepped on, or are left out to collect dirt.
Referencing the art object’s necessary relationship to sculpture, the artist opens the photographic surface to the experience of its duration, one fraught with the inconsistency of anecdote.
—Alex Gartenfeld