UnBound12! Artist Features: I
UNBOUND12!
July 7 – August 12
Join us for a breakdown of our annual juried + invitational photography exhibition. Each week, we’ll share information about our artists and the processes behind their pieces in the show.
SUPPORT THE EXHIBITION:
UnBound! is our “non-profit” play we make once a year, raising money which directly supports artists in the exhibition. Works in the show are available for purchase (like a normal exhibition), but friends can also give to the UnBound! Fund, which will be used by the gallery to acquire select works for the growing Candela Collection. One day, this collection will be donated to a notable arts institution. This year, we’re also hoping to extend the reach of funding, using a portion to help cover return shipments for artists who need it.
This exhibition supports photographers through exposure, but most importantly through collecting. If you purchase a piece, you are directly supporting that artist and adding to your personal collection; if you give to the UnBound! Fund, you are allowing an artist to be acquired for a permanent collection, or helping to cover an artist’s exhibition expenses. No matter what, your funds support an UnBound12! artist.
DOMINIQUE LABAUVIE | TAMPA, FL
White Space, 2023. Photogravure (Copper) and Drypoint Printed on Somerset Rag, 22 x 16 inches. Edition of 7 + 2AP. $1500, Framed.
The design of this series of sculptures crosses areas of my memory that make me say: I am entering the Forest. My friend, curator William Douglas named it: The Forest. All that is contained in one word, his, to be at the heart of this forest, which, from the origin of humanity has warmed us in caves, sheltered us in its architecture, protected us in our battles, fed us with its legends, myths, and secrets. We cross it, it is in us, and in front of us.
A tree is open like a book, developing its memory, its dimension, its extension, its smell, its weight and its form as the fullness of its being. By its presence, the importance of its existence creates a void- a visual clearing surrounding its place. Similar to typographic space the contrast of the black and white spaces generates a graphic choreography, which, in Labauvie’s sculpture translates to the frontality of the work. This frontal dynamic rejoins the sublime of the Greek Kouros sculptures from antiquity. Nature generates the sublime which, in turn can generate awe. With the state of global ecological distress it would be a desired endgame to be able to encourage the recognition of the power of nature through art.
Dominique LABAUVIE (b.1948, France) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work exhibits a minimal esthetic within the sensibility of the sublime. The intellectual and physical process of his practice is both rigorous and complex. He hand cuts, welds and manipulates steel into a linear sculpture invested by the space it occupies and the utopic levitation and gravity that they generate. Their territory is marked by a distinct graphic mapping, which seems to have negotiated magic with balance. Even though the natural landscape informs his work, Labauvie is in constant reflection about his environment, socio-political concerns, life and love.
He received the Villa Medecis hors-les-murs for Germany, and the Gottlieb Foundation Grant in honor of his artistic achievement. Dominique has exhibited in Europe, Japan and the United States. His most important commission was “Suspended Horizons”, a monumental sculpture for the City of Paris, which sits on the Quai de Seine at La Vilette, in Paris, France, 50 feet long in cast iron.
Dominique Labauvie’s work is included in major public and private collections, including but not limited to: The BNY | Mellon Corporate Collection, Pittsburgh, PA, The National Collection of Contemporary Art, France, Regional Collections of Art of Alsace, Paris, Languedoc Roussillon, France; The Runnymeade Collection in San Francisco; The Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, Florida; the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida; and The Tampa Museum of Art.
BENOÎT LEFEUVRE | PARIS, FRANCE
Mémoire de L'île d'Her, 2022. Pigment Print on Hahnemühle with Evaporated Sea Water, 39.3 x 27.5 inches. Edition #1 of 5. $2200 Individual, $6000 Triptych.
Mémoire de L'île d'Her is a continuation of Lefeuvre’s L'île d'Her series, which uses our understanding of the sea and its constant evolution to the function of human memory.
On L’île d’Her:
Self-produced by old silver films, the images revealed here result from the same vital and natural process. Their constituent chemical agents, during their slow decomposition, have produced over decades, arrangements of colors and abstract textures, but which curiously evoke the invisible organic movement of things. An imperceptible movement because it is that of long time, indeterminate forms because in perpetual mutations.
Much more than the reflection of mental images, they are the highlighting of what continues to be outside our perception of time and our field of vision: an autonomous life of matter. Rather than translating a feeling of loss, they arouse a form of contemplation in the face of the poetic revelation of the invisible and the ephemeral.
From Mémoire de L’île d’Her:
These reminiscences then appear in an altered form since the first time they were remembered. Going back to the surface, the images freeze a moment of our memory. Out of the water, they crystallize and become tangible. The water contained in the material evaporates and reveals the sea salt. This triptych opens up a meditative space on time and its shaping on our memory.
French artist Benoît Lefeuvre lives and works in Paris. Lefeuvre is interested in how memory is shaped by the passage of time. Working from photosensitive materials, whose chemical agents have decomposed naturally or by manipulation, he visually transcribes an invisible movement that escapes human perception. Through this process, the artist reveals natural, dreamlike landscapes.
Lefeuvre’s imagery is inspired by marine and geological scapes whose scale and perspectives challenge our perception. The artist likens the works’ materialization to autonomous events in nature, like the erosion of reefs by the sea.
Lefeuvre received a Master’s in Digital Art Direction from LISAA in Paris in 2019, and a BTS in Digital Media Graphic Design from Blanche of Castile, Le Chesnay in 2017. He has been in several solo and group exhibitions in Paris since 2021. His solo exhibition, Inventaire, is on view at Cabinet Denfert, Paris through September 16, 2023.
ISABELLA LA ROCCA GONZÁLEZ | KENTUCKY
Para mis campañoles, from the series, Ofrendas
Archival Pigment Print and Watercolor on Hotpress Cotton Paper,
11 x 15 inches. $1500
My work has long been focused on ecological concerns, especially concern for non-human animals. It seems self-evident that environmentalism and social justice must include the other animals who share our planet. This series is my offering to the many animals left for dead on the roads where I travel, often near the lake where I walk every day. Mostly, they are killed by cars but also by hunters, fishermen, and sometimes out of sheer cruelty. Their deaths are unnatural and violent. Ofrendas is my way of remembering these innocent animals in a lovelier context. The works are made with materials that are ecologically as harmless as possible: pigment prints on rag paper embellished with water-based paints, free of animal products.
Isabella La Rocca González is an artist, educator, and activist working primarily with photography. Her work is part of a long tradition in art and photography: to bring to light and find beauty in the hidden, unconscious, or disregarded. As a first generation American, her work is deeply influenced by her Mexican and Italian roots. Awards for her work include the Ferguson Grant from the Friends of Photography in San Francisco, CA for excellence and commitment to the field of photography. Her photographs have been exhibited throughout the United States including a solo show at the Center for Photography in Woodstock, NY. She received a B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.F.A. in Photography from Indiana University. After 21 years, she left her home in the San Francisco Bay area to found the Photography and Moving Image program at a small liberal arts college in Kentucky where she lives in a peaceful cabin high on a hill that looks out over a river, fields, and many trees and birds. After almost thirty years of teaching art and photography to thousands of students in state universities, art schools, private liberal arts colleges, and community colleges, she has left academia to devote herself full-time to her art practice.
SHANE MCFADDEN | RICHMOND, VA
The Man Who Lives on my Desk, 2023.
Archival Pigment Print, 22 x 17 inches.
Open Edition. $400, Framed.
Shane McFadden is a lens based artist with an emphasis on the photographic print from Newport News, Virginia. Currently based in Richmond, Virginia, he holds a BFA in Photography+Film from Virginia Commonwealth University and has a passion for collage.
ANDY MATTERN | STILLWATER, OK
Ghost #165, 2022.
Platinum Print, 15 x 11 inches.
Edition of #2 + 1AP. $1300, Framed.
Platinum prints are considered to be the most permanent of all photographic processes, but they have a little-known side effect. Their key ingredient, the noble metal platinum, reacts with other paper if left in prolonged contact. After decades, a faint mirror image appears on the nearby surface. In this project, found “ghost” images are rephotographed and made permanent again as modern platinum prints. The intention of this circular process is to harness the mysterious visual qualities of the source images and point to a surprising wrinkle in the fabric of photographic representation. According to current research, the original platinum prints are not depleted in this process, meaning they can theoretically reproduce themselves infinitely if given enough time.
Andy Mattern is a visual artist working in the expanded field of photography. His photographs and installations dissect the medium itself, reconfiguring expectations of photography's basic ingredients and conventions. His works is held in the permanent collections of the SFMOMA, the New Mexico Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among others. His photographs and exhibitions have been reviewed in publications such as in ARTFORUM, The New Yorker, Camera Austria, and PHOTONEWS. Currently, he serves as Associate Professor of Photography at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. He holds an MFA in photography from the University of Minnesota and a BFA in studio art from the University of New Mexico.
BONNIE BLAKE | LOS ANGELES, CA
Living On The Edge, 2023.
Archival Pigment Print, 16 x 20 inches.
Edition #1 of 15. $900, Framed.
“What we most need to do is to hear within us the sound of the earth crying.” - Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh
As an artist, I am drawn to examine both the exhilaration and tranquility I find in the beauty of the natural world, particularly the unique cliffs and beaches on the Pacific coastline near Los Angeles, California. Collages from the Edge explores my primal connection to these places, mingling the joy that I have felt near the ocean since childhood with the sorrow that the effects of global warming threaten to destroy them.
I reimagine a future without these places by making conceptual collages from prints of my photographs. I physically reassemble fragments of waves, surfers, beachcombers and sunsets to create scenes of chaos. Cutting up my prints and destroying my careful compositions heightens my feelings of personal loss and sorrow. As a lifelong movie lover and camera operator on films and television shows, the work is a nod to classic movies and cartoons from my childhood that depicted natural disasters as mythic monsters where huge fissures from earthquakes swallowed up entire cities.
Collages from the Edge describes the various emotional states during a precarious time, but it also calls attention to what will be lost. It is my hope that these collages will provoke an emotional, visceral response in the viewer. Only by letting myself connect to places that have sustained me throughout my life, have I begun to really absorb the fact that they are a part of me that may be destroyed.
Bonnie Blake is a fine art photographer based in Los Angeles with roots in Louisville, Kentucky and New York City.
Her formal images of landscapes, urban places and the people and animals that inhabit them reflect her desire to experience their energy. She believes that beauty can be an agent of change and hopes that her photography inspires the concern and action necessary to preserve the gifts of our natural world.
She has a BA in literature from Vanderbilt University, an M.F.A. in Theatre from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She spent many years in the entertainment industry working as a camera assistant and camera operator on documentaries, features and episodic television. She studied still photography with Fran Antmann in New York City as well as in classes at the International Center of Photography and the Los Angeles Center of Photography with Aline Smithson, Cig Harvey and Just Loomis.
Her work has been shown in group exhibits at the 1650 Gallery, the Photoplace Gallery, and the A Smith Gallery. In 2023 she won honorable mention in the Praxis Gallery show “The Artist Intervenes”. She won honorable mention in the 2020 Creative Portrait Exhibit at Los Angeles Center of Photography group show. Her work was selected for the current Los Angeles Center of Photography show entitled “Lifecycles”.
REUBEN RADDING | NEW YORK, NY
Jesus Selfie, Bronx, NYC, 2023.
Archival Pigment Print, 20 x 16 inches.
Edition of 3, $1000, Framed.
Reuben Radding is a photographer, writer and musician based in New York City. His award-winning street and personal documentary photographs depict elusive or unlikely candid moments, and intentionally provoke unanswerable questions in the viewer's mind. Radding's work has been exhibited in galleries around the world, and in publications like The New York Times, The New York Post, Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Hamburger Eyes, Maxim, Time Out, Hyperallergic, Downbeat and others. His work has also been featured at the Miami Street Photography Festival, The Center for Fine Art Photography, and the Focus on the Story Festival. His first book of photographs, Apparitions, was published in 2013. Radding has been an instructor with the New York Institute of Photography since 2013, and has taught workshops and/or lectured at New York University, The School of Creative and Performing Arts, Marble Hill Camera Club, and others. Since 2017 he has been teaching a series of photography workshops from his Brooklyn studio. He graduated from Goddard College with an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts in July 2019.
ROSS GERHOLD | RICHMOND, VA
Antique Store In Oklahoma City, 2021.
Archival Pigment Print on Hot Press Rag, 32 x 40 inches.
Edition #1 of 5. $2500, Framed.
It’s a feeling I often visit in my dreams, a preparation for tragedy. We’re all boiling frogs and either the world is ending, or it’s a quarter life crisis. The only reassurance that everything will work out is that the trees are still standing amidst the buildings and telephone poles that have caged them in. Somehow not poisoning the foliage, we accept the encroaching architecture and barely sympathize with the roots struggling to push through the sidewalk. There is something to our blissful ignorance, but for me, it is a paranoia. It’s all I can see.
Upon transitioning out of the 2020 pandemic came the newly introduced anxiety of the decade to follow. Finally the project began to take form, the culmination of the work that I’ve made thus far in my life that reflects a current emotional state influenced by our society and era.
The project is a documentation of daily surroundings mostly shot in Virginia and the greater United States. It explores aspects of loneliness, precise or doomed architecture, and an underlying layer of loss of family within a failing society. Each image and diptych represents vacancy alongside community, often in search of familial ties in the liminal environments I experience in between work and life events.
Softly lit scenes juxtaposed with harsh documentary style images reflect the brutal highs and lows of a modern day mind, the activity or lack- there-of. It’s a matter of viewing these scenes as a visitor, with a disassociation to their presenting environment. As with mental health disassociations, the work’s pages are filled with vacant and severed-from-reality scenes, a quiet and calm dystopia that we all inhabit. I hope to show the beauty in this disconnection from the natural that we all suffer, if not for the world, then maybe for myself."
Ross Gerhold, born into a railroad family in 1993 in Scottsbluff, NE, was raised in Wyoming, and eventually Virginia. Gerhold, whose photo work explores anxiety, disassociation, and the seemingly staged environments of our world, is naturally influenced by his upbringing and adolescent experiences. Gerhold examines today’s societal decay in tandem with the terrestrial beauty of the American South, but truly wherever he catches glimpses of personal and emotionally nostalgic scenes in the everyday world.
WILL DOUGLAS |
BROOKLYN, NY/ST. PETERSBURG, FL
Untitled #1 (Garbage Bag Photos), 2023. Photogravure (Copper), 21 x 15 inches. Edition #1 of 3 + 1AP.
$1500, Framed.
Untitled #2 (Garbage Bag Photos), 2023. Photogravure (Copper), 21 x 15 inches. Edition #1 of 3 + 1AP.
$1500, Framed.
Untitled (Garbage Bag Photos) is a series of abstracted imagery. I am interested in the ubiquity of garbage bags on the streets of New York City as formal objects and a subtle mechanism of social control. The trash bag conceals the used and discarded elements of residents' lives, providing a sense of discrete separation of fresh from the putrid. The bag's opaque surface hides away these abject elements from neighbors and passersby whose trash will soon commingle with their own. The abstract images are made as photogravures. Through this approach I respond to the way we receive imagery and how a change of medium affects our physical relationship to the image. The choice to work in a limited edition is meant to stand in direct contrast to the medium of photography's reproducibility and implied disposability. The small scale image speaks to each bag as a singular index to the subject who discarded it, and whose participation in this ritual binds them to the rest of society. These prints are part of a body of work which uses reproduced found objects transformed into materials such as glass, bronze, concrete, and ceramic as installation elements to catalyze the photographic imagery to unravel how our image saturated world has changed our relationship to the permanence and disposability of the object world.
Will Douglas received a BFA in Photography at VCUarts in 2012. He was a recipient of a VMFA undergraduate fellowship. He has been included in group exhibitions such as Skyway at The Tampa Museum of Art and Peripheral Vision at Candela in Richmond, VA and Annuale X at the Light Factory in Charlotte, NC. In 2015, he co-founded the artist run space Parallelogram Gallery in Tampa, FL. In 2018, he received a MFA at the USF where he was a graduate fellow. He was awarded a SPE Award for Innovations in Imaging. In 2019, Douglas published FLAT PICTURES (YOU CAN FEEL). That year he had a solo exhibition Drawing on the Hearts of Men at Quaid Gallery and Oh! Mary Mary Mary at Tempus Projects. In 2020, Douglas had an exhibition of FP(YCF) at Space Place in Nizhny Tagil. Later that year he had a solo show titled Monatge River with Tempus Projects and was include in the Florida Biennial at the Hollywood Arts and Culture Center. In 2022, he had a solo exhibition of Gone to the Dogs at the Leepa Rattner Museum Solo Space and in 2023 at Volta Space.