Buffy Summers detail, Stacia Yeapanis
The current exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, MP3: Volume 2: Midwest Photographers Publication Project highlights a selection of cutting edge photographers. Whether working with standard photographic techniques and unusual subject matter, reinventing the process through use of chemical and physical editing, or translating photographic captures to the craft of embroidery, these three artists push the limits of the media into new realms. The exhibit is up from July 17th to September 13th, 2009. Museum hours are Monday through Friday 10:00am to 5:00pm. The Museum is located on the first floor of the Alexandroff Campus Building at 600 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL.
The subject matter of Curtis Mann’s series Modifications, includes records of violence in currently war torn countries such as Kenya, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, and Lebanon. His resource material comes from photos found. His search includes estate sales, online auctions and photo-sharing websites. With these found photos, and a subtractive process, Mann creates original color prints whose surfaces bear the sense of loss. In Fragment 4, the limbs of a pair of youths lean over rocks, as the selected portion of this resource image lies as a rising wet drip across a plane touched with the white, orange and yellow of chemical and physical process. Mann received his MFA from Columbia College, Chicago, in 2008. He was born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1979. A 2007 Santa Fe Award nominee, Curtis Mann participates in contemporary photographic excellence with this body of work.
For information about the Santa Fe Photography Prize: www.visitcenter.org/programs.cfm
The lyrical and abstract forms John Opera employs in his abstract landscapes include works of ambiguity, such as the work Untitled, 2009 on loan from the collection of Victor Shanchuk, Jr. This work suggests the silhouette of cityscape or ruins, while revealing itself as an ice flow and running water, lit by ambient and flash produced light. Opera received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005. He was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1975. Among the photographs featured at Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago in January and February of 2008, were two of Opera’s Black Sun series. Working in digital photography and producing archival pigment prints, such as Black Sun II, 2006, which appears in the current exhibit, Opera pushes the limitations of photography.
For installation views of John Opera’s work, displayed with fellow photographer Amir Zaki, at Shane Campbell Gallery:
www.shanecampbellgallery.com/main/index.php
Inspired by pop culture and the universal struggle of humanity in the realms of identity and emotion, Stacia Yeapanis starts with photography. Her mixed media process translates television screen captures from popular sitcoms, through her series of embroidered portraits Everybody Hurts. Video, performance and computer simulation are utilized in her My Life as a Sim, a video-computer simulation which explores identity through a triptych screen view. She was born in Newport News, Virginia, in 1977 and earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006. Examples of Yeapanis work are in the collection of MoCP. Samples of the Everybody Hurts series and Comercial Free: The Museum of TV on DVD are available for members to view on the Rhizome Artbase online archive.
To view images or register for membership at the Rhizome Artbase:
www.rhizome.org/art/by_artist-list.php
MP3: Volume II, the Midwest Photographers Publication Project Co-published with the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago features the work of Curtis Mann, John Opera, and Stacia Yeapanis. Including essays by Rod Slemmons, director, MoCP; Natasha Egan, associate director and curator, MoCP; and Karen Irvine, curator, MoCP the book is available at the following websites.
www.aperture.org/books/books-new/mp3-vol2.html
While you are visiting this stretch of the South Loop, be sure to stop across the street at Summer Dance in Grant Park, see the website below for featured musicians and performances at the intersection of Michigan and between Harrison and Balbo.
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