May 12 - 15, 2022
Booth D22

Christine Elfman
Fragment IV, 2019 (Variation I)
Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype)
14.50 x 11.50 in [36.83 x 29.21 cm]

CHRISTINE ELFMAN

Showing work from All solid shapes dissolve in light and Blue Pictures

Bearing witness to the natural cycle of growth and decay, the anthotype is a photograph made from the same components that eventually facilitate its entropy. Christine Elfman’s fading pictures embody the constant transformation of objects, images, and memory. The images develop slowly: sitting outside for a month, the sun bleaches paper saturated with light-sensitive natural dyes. Once complete, these unfixable photographs slowly fade from the very same light that allows them to be seen. Elfman has coated many of her anthotypes with resin, prolonging their lifespan. Like an insect encased in amber, the resin acts as a preservative, slowing the breakdown of the dye molecules. When paired with gold toned iron-silver prints, the images emphasize a tension between the archival impulse and ephemerality of photography and the subjects themselves. 

Christine Elfman
Fragment VI, 2020 (Variation I)
Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype)
15 x 19 in [38.10 x 48.26 cm]

“We photograph to define, hold, capture things. However, pictures remind us of everything left undescribed and unknown. Early photographers were obsessed with fixing the image, so it would last forever. Yet experience shows us that the more you try to hold something still, the more it’s ruined. Taking a picture is like catching a bird for a collection, or turning a person into a statue. The subject matter of my work reflects this desire for security. However, the materiality of the prints acknowledges the necessity of change. This ruin - the fading - is the subject, medium, and fate of my photographs. And in their fading, they’re living, changing slowly, imperceptibly over time.”

— Christine Elfman

Christine Elfman
Cloth Water Stone II, 2021 (Variation II)
Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype, resin coated)
Frame: 40.50 x 32 in [102.87 x 81.28 cm]

Christine Elfman
Fold, 2020 (Variation III)
Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype)
19 x 15 in [48.26 x 38.10 cm]

Christine Elfman
Reproduction I, 2020 (Variation II)
Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype, resin coated)
Frame: 17.5 x 14 in [44.45 x 35.56 cm]

Christine Elfman
Fragment VIII, 2021 (Variation I)
Lichen Dye on Paper (anthotype)
16 x 12.50 in [40.64 x 31.75 cm]

Ansley West Rivers
Salton Sea, Colorado River, California, 2017
Archival pigment print
Frame: 25 x 31 in [63.5 x 78.74 cm]
Edition 2/7 + 2AP

ANSLEY WEST RIVERS

Showing work from Seven Rivers

From source to sea, Ansley West Rivers has traveled extensively along the length of multiple American rivers since she began the Seven Rivers project in 2013. Traversing this wild territory through hiking or rafting over multiple weeks with a large format camera, West Rivers takes stock of both her subject matter itself, rivers, but also the relationship that unfolds between her and the natural landscape.

While Seven Rivers references the American tradition of landscape photography, the images diverge from traditional landscape portraiture by presenting constructed landscapes. By creating compositions on negatives, the artist intervenes in the image to prioritize a record of personal intimacy and emotion over straightforward documentation.

Ansley West Rivers
Columbia River, Revelstoke Town Park, British Columbia, Canada, 2018
Archival pigment print
Frame: 25 x 31 in [63.5 x 78.74 cm]
Edition 2/7

“As I witness the beauty, degradation and changes occurring on all rivers, I have come to view our watersheds with expanding emotion. The history of landscape photography in the United States is inspiring and complicated. I have climbed mountains, floated streams and walked through forests that have enthralled the lineage of artists before me. I too have lugged heavy equipment and negatives on my back in order to capture the landscapes that support us physically and emotionally. But I am not shooting to lure people out West, prove the magic of live oaks or depict the novelty of wilderness. My goal differs as it is directed by the present. I too seek to depict the beauty that exists within every riverbend, but I no longer see the infinite, I am faced with the finite. In my compositions, I create within the context of the past and the present to bring more clearly into view the lifespan of freshwater, with the hope of not creating evidence of lost landscapes.”

— Ansley West Rivers

Rodrigo Valenzuela
New Land (Untitled 8), 2021
Unique acrylic, toner and chalk on canvas
35.75 x 35.50 in [90.80 x 90.17 cm]

RODRIGO VALENZUELA

showing work from New Land

Rodrigo Valenzuela constructs scenes and narratives that point to the tensions between individuals and the societies in which they live. Much of Valenzuela’s work addresses the experiences of undocumented immigrants and laborers. In New Land, the artist considers the ideology of Manifest Destiny—a 19th century belief in the inherent superiority of white European-Americans and their predetermined fortune to conquer North America—as well as the failures of the Homestead Acts that quickened the settlement of public land west of the Mississippi River. Valenzuela’s images of barren desert landscapes, the iconographic American West, invoke both these ideas of expansion and opportunity as well as painful histories of erasure that resonate with present-day debates on immigration, border control, gentrification, and climate change.

Valenzuela creates his landscapes by transferring printing toner onto raw canvas, a laborious process made evident by the wear and tear of the material. For the artist, this technique mimics that of photocopies and is a metaphor for the arduous bureaucratic procedures that immigrants must endure. The artist has first-hand experience of this as he emigrated from Chile to Canada and then to the United States. For many years, Valenzuela worked in the construction industry, a background often reflected in his installation materials, such as drywall and scaffolding, and in his videos. In New Land, references to architecture and interior spaces are superimposed on the landscapes, taking the form of lines and boxes that the artist describes as “transition zones” and “structures built out of desire.”

“The history of landscape painting is about male domination. Most of the romantic paintings we encounter from the 19th century, for example by J.M.W. Turner and John Singleton Copley, contain a Western mentality of conquering nature and a sense of entitlement to land ownership. As an immigrant or Latino or poor person, I have different fantasies. We day laborers work on the land, but we do not own the land. In painting culture, you are the owner of the landscape.”

— Rodrigo Valenzuela

Rodrigo Valenzuela
New Land No. (Untitled 7), 2021
Unique acrylic, toner and chalk on canvas
37 x 44.50 in [93.98 x 113.03 cm]