Parting Words
Curated by Jacob Rhodes
May 16 - June 20, 2024
Preview: May 16, 6-8pm
Artist Reception: June 6, 6-8
Artist Talk: June 8, 4pm
Field Projects is honored to present AMY ELKINS : PARTING WORDS.
Parting Words is a visual archive created out of mug shots and testimony readily available through public records of the 560+ people executed in Texas prisons since 1976, the year the ban on capital punishment was overturned. Using an algorithm, Elkins converted each mug shot into looping excerpts from last utterances ranging from confessions to hymns, protest to sorrows and fears. Parting Words is a work in progress, growing in size with the growing numbers of those executed in Texas, a state responsible for over 37% of all executions in the United States, which is more than the totals of Virginia, Oklahoma, Florida, Missouri, Georgia and Alabama combined.
A belated share but several images from Black is the Day, Black is the Night were recently in the group exhibition Crisis of Image at MoCA Arlington curated by Field Projects Gallery. It got a lovely write up in the Washington Post.
CRISIS OF IMAGE
FEBRUARY 11 - MAY 14, 2023
MoCA Arlington
Additional artists: Ayanna Dozier, Melissa Joseph, Lydia McCarthy, Triton Mobley, Steve Pauley, Sasha Rudensky, and Rob Swainston and Zorawar Sidhu
Catalog essay by Kirsten Gill
The artists in Crisis of Image do not seek to escape the image, nor do they seek to make new images. They seek equity in our saturated visual world by developing new methods, strategies, and modes of access in relation to the production of images.
Images have been contested and called impersonators throughout time. Our saturated visual culture has produced new calls for image suppression – but why? One answer might be that the recent abundance of image making technologies has made visual production more accessible. In the 1970s and 80s images were claimed and revitalized by artists whose right to produce them had been historically denied – resulting in the emergence of new feminist, BIPoC, and queer representational strategies. Those efforts were often met with attempts at censorship and repression.
More recently, the overwhelming volume of images in contemporary life has created a new path for suppression, as the sheer abundance of images in circulation buries or represses those that challenge existing power structures. Crisis of Image introduces artists who resist the call for image suppression, focusing instead on developing methods of image transformation and production, creating new strategies for breaking through the visual overabundance of our current moment.
Crisis of Image is curated by Field Projects, a collectively run, artist-centric gallery established in 2011. Field Projects is committed to creating equity and opportunities for artists by placing community support over market profits. Based in Chelsea, NYC, Field Projects features bi-monthly onsite exhibitions as well as satellite shows, art fairs, Field Residency, Field Pod, and online exhibitions.
Happy to share that several new works from the project A Place Where We Are In The Sun have been selected for FORECAST 2023, SF Camerawork’s annual survey exhibition. Each year SF Camerawork invites an esteemed jury of artists, curators and critics to select and showcase the work of image makers, with an eye toward current movements, trends and concerns in contemporary photography. This year, Bay Area artists Ashima Yadava and Minoosh Zomorodinia have selected the work of Mary Campbell, Harvey Castro, Amy Elkins, Shao-Feng Hsu (Juror’s Choice Award), Kei Ito, and Helia Pouyanfar.
FORECAST 2023 will be on view May 9 through August 5, 2023 at their new gallery in the historic Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture, overlooking the Golden Gate.
