FLUX | Fall 2022: Alyssa Salomon
flux | FALL 2022
September 2 – October 22, 2022
Flux is an ongoing spotlight of works in Candela’s gallery inventory showcasing the breadth of the photographic medium and our love for process. Join us over the course of the next month as we highlight this season’s featured artists: Harrison D Walker, Linda Connor, Alyssa Salomon, and Willie Anne Wright.
Alyssa Salomon's union of early photographic process and contemporary design hangs in the far right corner of the second gallery room, the words “nothing but blue skies” repeated across fiber paper. The phrase, encouraging in origin and soothing in color, presents as a frenzied reminder of optimism when repeated, layered, and twisted. The artist creates the 38 x 25-inch cyanotypes through exposures of sunlight rather than darkroom bulbs, which can sometimes span up to half an hour’s time.
Installation of alternative photographic process works by Alyssa Salomon on view for Flux Fall 2022 at Candela Gallery in Richmond, Virginia. Photo by Terry Brown.
Time & Place for Considering Optimism & Sunlight,
2020-05-02-03. Cyanotype on Abaca/Kozo Paper, Waxed, 38 x 25 inches. Unique. $1700. INQUIRE >
Time & Place for Considering Optimism & Sunlight,
2020-04-17-03. Cyanotype on Abaca/Kozo Paper, Waxed, 38 x 25 inches. Unique. $1700. INQUIRE >
Time & Place for Considering Optimism & Sunlight,
2020-April-01. Cyanotype on Abaca/Kozo Paper, Waxed, 38 x 25 inches. Unique. $1700. INQUIRE >
Salomon shares her process:
Making cyanotype exposures is a type of photographic printing called “contact
printing." These particular cyanotypes are more low-contact or no-contact prints. Rather than pressing negative cheek-to-cheek with prepared paper, I suspended, contorted and even moved my negatives and papers around during printing. From the rigid letterforms on my negatives, these mistreatments generated cacophonous stuttering phrases, curvaceous shapes, and rich tonal ranges, evoking drifting sky-writing and big horizons.
Time & Place for Considering Optimism & Sunlight,
2020-April-01. Cyanotype on Abaca/Kozo Paper, Waxed, 38 x 25 inches. Unique. $1700. INQUIRE >
Time & Place for Considering Optimism & Sunlight,
2020-04-19-03. Cyanotype on Abaca/Kozo Paper, Waxed, 38 x 25 inches. Unique. $1700. INQUIRE >
The artist is drawn to the lack of rigidity in her particular process, with each work being an experiment subject to time, space, and light. "A lot happens to sunlight during that time: our earth rotates; sun rises up and goes down; clouds cross sky, air moves shadows, heat shimmers. Plus, there’s a good gap of time between each print’s exposure - I process the last print, get a negative ready, reposition my work table, fuss around. Each print is touched by different sunlight. Every print is truly the only one like it. Over time, conditions are always changing; for light, for photography, for experience."