ARTIST BREAKDOWN P.I: UnBound11!
UnBound11!
ANNUAL JURIED + INVITATIONAL EXHIBITION
July 1 - August 6, 2022
Follow along over the next few weeks as we spotlight works currently on view at Candela Gallery. This summer group exhibition is our annual open call and is dedicated to featuring a wide range of photographic artworks, fine art photography, and artist books. We are proud of UnBound's mission to generate opportunities and exposure beyond the traditional group or juried show by providing a collection opportunity for artists. All funds raised throughout the show, help us reach our 2022 goal of 10k to support participating artists by acquiring work into the Candela Collection, which will one day be donated to an institution. Visit our shop to give, purchase the exhibition catalog, and/or snag some Candela merch. 100% of the proceeds raised will go towards supporting participating artists.
DEBRA ACHEN
Caving In, 2021. Hand-Manipulated Archival Pigment Print, 13 x 19 inches. Variant Edition 2 of 6 + 2 AP. $900
The hand-folded, burned, and stitched prints in my “Folding and Mending” series are a way of expressing “the world folding in on itself.” We are so focused on our daily tasks and routines that we are neglecting the environment on which our very survival depends. We have created an imbalance in which our world is collapsing and there is increased urgency to raise awareness of the seriousness of our climate crisis. As record storms and wildfires wreak havoc on our forests and communities, our ecosystems are unraveling at an alarming rate. My hand-manipulated photographs allude to the results. Coastlines erode and submerge as sea levels rise. Trees and forests, stressed from years of drought, succumb to disease and fire. Golden hills crack and crumble. All at the hand of mankind.
While large, complex solutions are needed to fix the damage, there are small things each of us can do to help slow the erosion, clear the air, mend the cracks, and hold our planet together. Mending is a simple chore we do to repair, maintain, and extend the life of the things we use in our everyday lives. At a higher level, we can also take actions to mend our environment and maintain the basic elements we depend on - earth, air, fire, and water. The stitching in my images is a metaphor for the repairing and rebuilding we must do to make our world whole again.
Nature is resilient and our impacts can be reversed. Do we have the resolve to make change happen? Some of the “Folding and Mending” pieces are more deconstructive in nature. Collaged layers are torn and burned on the edges. Bits and patches extend beyond the image border, some held in place by threads… as if we dangle at the precipice.
ELIJAH BARRETT
When I consider the subjects of my photographs, I think about Richard Linklater’s film Slacker, which moved through 1990s-era Austin, Texas, encountering young people who felt like the Reagan/Bush-era,free-market capitalist society had left them behind. On Slacker, the film historian Christina Lee writes, “Far from the losers that the term connotes, and which Linklater plays upon, the individuals are modern-day theorists and activists. They find reason for, and meaning in, their existence, despite their derelict condition. For this cohort, upward mobility is virtually nonexistent, unemployment is rife, and the American dream has long soured. The characters in Slacker do not dwell in the present because they fear the future, but because there is no future.”1
Erich & Jack, 2021. Archival Pigment Print, 23 3/4 x 30 3/16 inches. Artist Proof, Edition of 5 + 1 AP. $2400
New Models has a similar fascination with the young people who have made the choice to step out from the main currents of society, despite the risks involved. The pictures depict these youth, dressed in secondhand, often retro clothing, posing for pictures in backyards and public parks, faraway from the luxury condos and tasting menus favored by the contemporary young urban professional set.
In this work, I am interested in playfully confusing the notions of subject and photographer, the scene and the behind-the-scenes, realism and self-consciousness. Suspended between past and present, sincerity and affect, the pictures long romantically and nostalgically for the good looks, vitality, and idealism of youth, while at the same time seeing youth as a repository for our desires and regrets. Youth is more image than substance, but its draw is irresistible.
1 Christina Lee. Screening Generation X: The Politics and Popular Memory of Youth in Contemporary Cinema. (London:Routledge, 2020). Accessed via Google Books July 30, 2021.
LINDA BARSOTTI
Arms 2, 2021. Archival Pigment Print on Red River Polar Luster Paper, Folded, Glued and Taped with Archival Materials 25 x 18 inch Photographic Sculpture; Framed with Acrylic Shadow Box, 26 x 20 inches. $1800
“Flawed Pedigree: The Mosaic of DNA” is the first chapter of my series on Macular Degeneration. The images I have submitted are a part of this series.
I have Macular Degeneration. My father, his sister and my twin brother had early onset Macular Degeneration in their early 20’s. It is part of my genetic makeup. We are a direct result of our DNA. It shapes our identity and informs our lives passed onto us through generations. The photo sculptures are mosaics creating a multi-dimensional look at my DNA. They are interplays between portraits of my paternal ancestry and images of my retina.
Creating photographic sculptures intensifies the angst of my future. The preciseness to form each sculpture and the mathematical calculations and measurements amplifies the obstacles I face as the disease progresses. While the series is personal to me, it will resonate with many since 30% of people over 50 years will develop the disease.
The series is a path to clarity, knowledge and acceptance.
MICHAEL BOROWSKI
The Wooden Beaver Archive Document 0647
(Local Gossip), 2022. Salt Print, 14 x 11 inches, Unique. $1200
The Wooden Beaver Archive Document 0653
(Women's Bath), 2022. Salt Print, 14 x 11 inches, Unique. $1200
This series of salt prints is about a parafictional mineral spring located in southwest Virginia, called The Wooden Beaver. I began imagining this site after researching mineral springs located throughout Virginia and West Virginia in the late 19th Century, as well as the history of the bathhouse as a site of queer desire and public sex. The images are made using a Generative Adversarial Network, or GAN. The GAN is a machine learning process that trains on a collection of data and is then able to generate new data – in this case it generates an image based on text prompts related to saunas, bathhouses, spas, etc. I made these digital images into negatives and then printed them using the salt print process. This was one of the most prevalent photographic process during the mid-19th Century, when mineral spring sites were at the height of their popularity. This hybrid process of old and new technologies questions the history and architecture of public bathing. Mineral springs began to decline at the end of the 19th Century, coinciding with the Yellow Fever epidemic and the beginnings of modern germ theory. Although most bathhouses that catered to gay clientele were clandestine operations and subject to vice raids, many closed for good in the 1980s during the height of the AIDs epidemic. The Wooden Beaver exists in a timeline where these histories overlap. The salt prints function as an imaginary archive of the historic site.
TRENT BOZEMAN
Children Activities (In Elaine), 2020. Archival Inkjet Print, 20 x 25 inches. Open Edition. $800
We All Saw It, 2020. Archival Inkjet Print, 20 x 16 inches. Open Edition. $600
The racial divide is as strong as ever in Elaine, creating a culture of silence and negligence. Community is everything for the black people who are still living on the killing fields of their ancestors. Amidst COVID-19, children in Elaine have been attending school in a town about an hour away twice a week. A majority of the children have never heard of the tragedy that occurred. Not only was this astonishing but it also made me realize the lack of education and history these kids have to deal with. They do not understand the levels of inequity in their lives such as why their mayor was never elected, why the north side of Main Street is riddled with potholes and debris, or why the memorial resides in Helena and not Elaine.
My first visit last August was a lonely one until I found the basketball court. Kids of all ages shoot hoops and ride four-wheelers through loose gravel. It really is the only place in the town where they can be themselves freely. Throughout this past summer, I was fortunate to be able to host a photography camp with a select group of children at The Elaine Legacy Center. Giving these kids the tools and agency to represent themselves is empowering and can, hopefully, alter how this place exists to them. The town is currently constructing the Elaine Civil Rights Museum and I intend for the full body of work and the images made by the kids to solely exist there as an ever-evolving archive.
Moving forward into this long-term project, I am focusing on collaboration while also making images that hold a more vocal stance on the inner politics, societal issues, and culture of Elaine. There is lots of open space in Elaine and I am very interested in the possibilities around documenting site-specific work that I create in the field. I plan to continue my photography camp next summer and will be consistently traveling to Elaine for a very long time as the town enters a new chapter in its fight for land reparations.
