EXHIBITION: Altered
ALTERED
JUSTIN CARNEY • ELI CRAVEN • ALMA HASER • ADRIENE HUGHES
OPENING RECEPTION
Friday, September 1, 5-8:30pm
JUSTIN CARNEY
In and the disappearing has become by Justin A. Carney, the distinction between memory and the fleeting nature of life becomes indistinct, as seen through a sequence of misty familial landscapes and silhouetted figures. Carney layers mono-printing techniques to each photograph, followed by delicately sanding and painting the surface with sandpaper. What remains is a poignant and evocative portrayal of his personal journey that lingers hauntingly with nostalgia.
ELI CRAVEN
In Soap Opera, Eli Craven engages the viewer by obscuring the image through a series of circular cutouts and mirrors built into his intricately designed frames. From behind each set of peepholes and reflective surfaces, Craven compels viewers to engage with the imagery of vintage daytime soap operas (dating back to the 1980s and 90s) from various perspectives, thereby uncovering their concealed essence.
ALMA HASER
London-based artist Alma Haser's project, Pseudo, offers a fresh perspective on conventional still-life photography with a combination of playfulness and therapeutic depth. Haser employs a method of dismantling and rebuilding each piece, involving intricate paper collages, precise folding, and re-photography techniques. This approach blurs the line in distinguishing which botanical still-life images are real and which are artificially crafted, resulting in a captivating interplay between authenticity and artifice.
ADRIENE HUGHES
Secret Life of Trees offers viewers an immersive perspective into Adriene Hughes' uniquely crafted photographic landscapes. Using infrared cameras, these dystopian landscapes come alive with an array of vivid hues, depicting a network of activity. Enhanced by intricate hand-embroidered details, every thread serves to link the myriad of living species, functioning akin to the communication network of fungi.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
JUSTIN A. CARNEY is an artist and educator that uses autobiographical photography to question how death and grief affect familial connections—the bonds that keep a family together and cause them to separate, and how grief shapes an individual. Much of Carney’s artistic practice deals with confronting and exposing grief surrounding death to create an avenue for not only himself but also for others to find healing and cope with the deaths in their lives.
Carney is originally from Baltimore, Maryland, and currently teaches at Indiana University Purdue University, Indianapolis. He received his MFA in Photography at Indiana University Bloomington. He holds a BFA in Photography from Pennsylvania College of Art &. Design. He is the recipient of the Bloomington Arts Commission 2022 Emerging Artist Grant. He has been awarded the First Place Single Image Award from LensCulture Art Photography Awards 2023 and the Best in Show Award in the 2020 Emerging Vision, Colorado Photographic Arts Center Biennial Student Show. Carney’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.
ELI CRAVEN (b. 1979) is an artist based in Lafayette, Indiana where he is an Assistant Professor of Photography at Purdue University. Craven’s research resides in the critical investigation of the image and its relationship to ideologies of sexuality, desire, and death. His work is exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at KlompChing Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, at the South Bend Museum of Art's 31st Biennial, and at Feinkunst Krüger Gallery in Hamburg, Germany. His work has also been widely published. Select publications and clients include Philosophie Magazine, The Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Gestalten Publishing Berlin, Penguin Random House Barcelona, and The Paris National Opera.
ALMA HASER expands the dimensions of traditional portrait photography, taking her photographs further by using inventive paper-folding techniques, collage, and mixed media to create layers of intrigue around her subjects, manipulating her portraits into futuristic paper sculptures and blurring the distinctions between two-dimensional and three-dimensional imagery.
Alma Haser is based in SouthEast England and has won many awards for her work, including Magenta Foundation's Bright Spark Award for her Cosmic Surgery series (the basis of a successful self-published book project). Her piece The Ventriloquist won fourth prize for the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery. Alma also won the PDN Photo Annual Award for her Eureka Effect series. Her work has been exhibited worldwide.
ADRIENE HUGHES is a San Diego-based fine art photographer with an MFA from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Tufts University. She is a multi-media artist whose current body of work is based within the genre of grand landscape and the effects of global warming on the environment through the use of infrared technology, photography, and video installation.
Hughes' photography has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including video installation at Venice Biennial at the Scuola Grande della Misericordia, and the Lishui International Photo Festival, China. Recent exhibitions include BlackBox Projects London, Klompching Gallery New York, Centro Cultural (CECUT) Tijuana, Mexico, California Center for the Arts, The Center for Fine Arts Photography at Ft. Collins, and others. Her photographs have been featured in many publications including Wired, Harper’s Magazine, PDN, Phroom Magazine, German Foto, Fraction Magazine, and others. She is also the recipient of the 2018 Rhonda Wilson Award with Klompching Gallery, a 2018 Critical Mass Top 50 recipient, and 2020 Critical Mass finalist.