Solo Show at Newspace Center for Photography
Newspace Center for Photography
November 6-29, opening reception Friday November 6 from 7-10
1632 SE 10th Ave. Portland, OR 97214
503.963.1935
Monday-Thursday
10am-8pm
Friday-Sunday 10am-6pm (First Friday's 7-10pm)
November 6-29, opening reception Friday November 6 from 7-10
1632 SE 10th Ave. Portland, OR 97214
503.963.1935
Monday-Thursday
10am-8pm
Friday-Sunday 10am-6pm (First Friday's 7-10pm)
Solo Show at Togonon Gallery
review here:
and here: (towards the bottom of the page)
Chronicle of a Place Unknown
Photographs by Jessica Skloven
March 5-28, 2009
opening reception Thursday March 5 at 5:30 - 8
Togonon Gallery
77 Geary Street, 2nd Floor San Francisco, CA
Essay by Maria Porges
Essay by Maria Porges
Outside the (magic) Box
1.
Spidery veins of white meander across a field of milky grey. The scale of these pale, wandering fingers is difficult to decipher: are we looking through a microscope or into a telescope? As it turns out, these riverine lines are, well, rivers, seen from a plane flying over some of the most astonishing scenery in the world.
In July of 2008, Jessica Skloven traveled to Iceland—a place so far north that the summer sun never really goes below the horizon, day or night. Skloven became fascinated by this constant, crepuscular illumination. At all hours, she photographed the land and water-- from stinking fields of fumaroles to silvery expanses of ocean, from far away and from very, very close. She recalls that one of the most fascinating things about this island country was that, though small, it didn’t feel that way—since every corner she turned introduced her to something different. She encountered little vegetation (and no living non-human creatures, aside from birds and sheep) on her travels, but Skloven found the harsh and barren landscape to be fantastically complex in terms of its active geology. It was what she had dreamed of: a place devoid of the usual notions of pastoral, pretty, or romantic.
Throughout the body of work resulting from this trip, water-- a point of departure in Skloven’s earlier work—still plays an important role. Those delta-like systems of rivers and streams, for instance, are filled with glacier melt: the result of fiery volcanic activity under masses of ice. And in pictures like mirror mirror (2009), the twinned reflection of light on the ocean becomes a vehicle for Skloven to transform a familiar subject into something uncanny. The angle of the light creates a perspective that suggests we are looking up as we look out, destabilizing any sense of space or scale.
But Skloven’s manipulation extends far beyond the placement of her camera. This sense of unfamiliarity—even instability-- is a deliberate construction, in that the photographic process itself has become a key component in the making of these works. The negative, in other words, is only a point of departure from which each image she creates is translated, in the darkroom, into what we encounter in the gallery. In a very real sense, the magic takes place long after the picture was taken.
Skloven used positive film on some days, fully intending to print the resulting images as she would if she were using a negative. As a consequence, the brilliant colors of Untitled (June 10, 2008) (2009) are a perverse inverse of what she saw through her lens. Still, despite its startling orange hue, it has the same reductive sparseness of the rest of her images, invoking a desire for the foregrounding of the conceptual. These pictures are both beautiful and enigmatic, demanding a kind of close and careful examination, but they reward us for expending time and effort with a sense that we are seeing something that we could never catch a glimpse of otherwise.
ll.
ESTRAGON: I remember the maps of the Holy Land. Coloured they were. Very pretty. The Dead Sea was pale blue. The very look of it made me thirsty. That's where we'll go, I used to say, that's where we'll go for our honeymoon. We'll swim. We'll be happy.—Waiting for Godot, Act I
Though individually compelling, Skloven’s Iceland photographs should be considered as a body of work—a suite, a symphony, a non-narrative tale told in Beckett-esque phrases. Its internal pacing comes from differences in scale, the use (and absence)of color-- and the titles Skloven invents for each image. Their purpose is not to provide information, exactly, but to provide what she calls “breathing room.” When the title is a date, for example, it’s symbolic rather than literal. Its significance may be broadly accessible—the day something important occurred—or, just as likely, only meaningful to Skloven herself. While this seemingly quixotic approach implies that any title can add meaning that exists outside of our understanding of a work, it can also open up possibilities for the activation of our own imaginations. In a way, by not seeing everything at once, we can see more than we might have ever hoped to.
-Maria Porges
1.
Spidery veins of white meander across a field of milky grey. The scale of these pale, wandering fingers is difficult to decipher: are we looking through a microscope or into a telescope? As it turns out, these riverine lines are, well, rivers, seen from a plane flying over some of the most astonishing scenery in the world.
In July of 2008, Jessica Skloven traveled to Iceland—a place so far north that the summer sun never really goes below the horizon, day or night. Skloven became fascinated by this constant, crepuscular illumination. At all hours, she photographed the land and water-- from stinking fields of fumaroles to silvery expanses of ocean, from far away and from very, very close. She recalls that one of the most fascinating things about this island country was that, though small, it didn’t feel that way—since every corner she turned introduced her to something different. She encountered little vegetation (and no living non-human creatures, aside from birds and sheep) on her travels, but Skloven found the harsh and barren landscape to be fantastically complex in terms of its active geology. It was what she had dreamed of: a place devoid of the usual notions of pastoral, pretty, or romantic.
Throughout the body of work resulting from this trip, water-- a point of departure in Skloven’s earlier work—still plays an important role. Those delta-like systems of rivers and streams, for instance, are filled with glacier melt: the result of fiery volcanic activity under masses of ice. And in pictures like mirror mirror (2009), the twinned reflection of light on the ocean becomes a vehicle for Skloven to transform a familiar subject into something uncanny. The angle of the light creates a perspective that suggests we are looking up as we look out, destabilizing any sense of space or scale.
But Skloven’s manipulation extends far beyond the placement of her camera. This sense of unfamiliarity—even instability-- is a deliberate construction, in that the photographic process itself has become a key component in the making of these works. The negative, in other words, is only a point of departure from which each image she creates is translated, in the darkroom, into what we encounter in the gallery. In a very real sense, the magic takes place long after the picture was taken.
Skloven used positive film on some days, fully intending to print the resulting images as she would if she were using a negative. As a consequence, the brilliant colors of Untitled (June 10, 2008) (2009) are a perverse inverse of what she saw through her lens. Still, despite its startling orange hue, it has the same reductive sparseness of the rest of her images, invoking a desire for the foregrounding of the conceptual. These pictures are both beautiful and enigmatic, demanding a kind of close and careful examination, but they reward us for expending time and effort with a sense that we are seeing something that we could never catch a glimpse of otherwise.
ll.
ESTRAGON: I remember the maps of the Holy Land. Coloured they were. Very pretty. The Dead Sea was pale blue. The very look of it made me thirsty. That's where we'll go, I used to say, that's where we'll go for our honeymoon. We'll swim. We'll be happy.—Waiting for Godot, Act I
Though individually compelling, Skloven’s Iceland photographs should be considered as a body of work—a suite, a symphony, a non-narrative tale told in Beckett-esque phrases. Its internal pacing comes from differences in scale, the use (and absence)of color-- and the titles Skloven invents for each image. Their purpose is not to provide information, exactly, but to provide what she calls “breathing room.” When the title is a date, for example, it’s symbolic rather than literal. Its significance may be broadly accessible—the day something important occurred—or, just as likely, only meaningful to Skloven herself. While this seemingly quixotic approach implies that any title can add meaning that exists outside of our understanding of a work, it can also open up possibilities for the activation of our own imaginations. In a way, by not seeing everything at once, we can see more than we might have ever hoped to.
-Maria Porges
Exhibition at Togonon Gallery
"Art in Your Backyard"
Exhibition: November 13 – December 20, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 8, 2008
5:30-7:30 p.m.
Featured Artists:
Peter Forakis, Leo Valledor, Sam Provenzano, David Johnson, Malcolm Lubliner, Yue Ying Zhong, Hilda Robinson, Brigid McCabe, Servando Garcia, Jessica Skloven
Press Release:
Togonon Gallery is proud to present “ Art In Your Backyard”, an exhibition featuring local established and emerging artists. The show runs from November 13 to December 20, 2008 and is designed as the comprehensive finale of an exciting year. The gallery will present highlights of its shows of 2008 as well as new works, focusing on photographers, painters and sculptors who made, or still make, the San Francisco Bay Area a pivotal point of their creative work.
77 Geary, 2nd. Fl
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 11-5:30 p.m.
Exhibition: November 13 – December 20, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 8, 2008
5:30-7:30 p.m.
Featured Artists:
Peter Forakis, Leo Valledor, Sam Provenzano, David Johnson, Malcolm Lubliner, Yue Ying Zhong, Hilda Robinson, Brigid McCabe, Servando Garcia, Jessica Skloven
Press Release:
Togonon Gallery is proud to present “ Art In Your Backyard”, an exhibition featuring local established and emerging artists. The show runs from November 13 to December 20, 2008 and is designed as the comprehensive finale of an exciting year. The gallery will present highlights of its shows of 2008 as well as new works, focusing on photographers, painters and sculptors who made, or still make, the San Francisco Bay Area a pivotal point of their creative work.
77 Geary, 2nd. Fl
Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 11-5:30 p.m.
Exhibition at the Spare Room Project
Exhibition at Herberger theater Center Art Gallery
Abstract / Abstracted
Group exhibition curated by Joan C. Thompson
July 11- September 1, 2008
Opening reception Friday, July 11 5:30-7 pm
Group exhibition curated by Joan C. Thompson
July 11- September 1, 2008
Opening reception Friday, July 11 5:30-7 pm
Exhibition at Newspace Center for Photography
Portland Oregon
Newspace Center for Photography Juried Exhibition
Thursday, July 3rd through Sunday, July 27th
Reception Friday, July 11th from 7-10pm
Newspace Center for Photography
1632 SE 10th Ave. Portland, OR 97214
503.963.1935
exhibition information
Newspace Center for Photography Juried Exhibition
Thursday, July 3rd through Sunday, July 27th
Reception Friday, July 11th from 7-10pm
Newspace Center for Photography
1632 SE 10th Ave. Portland, OR 97214
503.963.1935
exhibition information
MFA Exhibition at California College of the Arts
Thursday May 8 - Saturday May 17, 2008 (10am-6pm daily)
Opening Reception May 8, 6-9 pm
1111 8th Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
http://www.cca.edu/about/press Exhibition Press Release
http://www.cca.edu/about/sf-ca map
Opening Reception May 8, 6-9 pm
1111 8th Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
http://www.cca.edu/about/press Exhibition Press Release
http://www.cca.edu/about/sf-ca map
