On August 3rd, Foley Gallery continues and concludes the 2023 edition of “the Exhibition Lab Exhibition” with a group show featuring work by Ann Prochilo, David Ricci, Derek Hayes, Jill Laurie Goodman, Jon Plasse, and Tod Bryant. The exhibition will feature photographers exploring various genres, from documentary, autobiographical, and surreal to new media forms, including mixed media.
Ann Prochilo’s photography explores themes of belonging, change, and memory, focusing on the flashes of anticipation that occur before periods of transformation. In her series This Is Water, she is interested in both the hidden and exposed moments of emergence and resurfacing. Disorienting yet captivating, Prochilo’s photographs of water examine the contradictory ideas of mindfulness and dissociation, inviting us to challenge the complacency that we may not realize we’d been harboring.
Over the last five years, photographer David Ricci has documented a vast array of objects in antique shops, flea markets, and collectable fairs across America. His images investigate the ugly truths of the country’s past including consumerism, racism, and misogyny, and how these truths continue to inform the present. Beyond depicting the bustling trading systems of relics from the past, Ricci’s work addresses current, painful realities about our history, society, and ourselves.
Maine-based photographer Derek Hayes’s series Most Art is Made by the Dead explores mortality, the passage of time, and losing the ones we love. In response to the loss of his father earlier this year and his mother shortly before that, Hayes’ powerful and heartbreaking images are the photographic record of his experience with grief. While his work is wistful and melancholy, it is also surprisingly comforting, reminding us that loss is a fundamental thread of the human experience.
Jon Plasse’s transitory photographic works meditate on the fleeting moments of everyday life. Plasse plays with space in his surreal black and white images, creating a world where far distances become reachable, late afternoon light vibrates, and the present becomes a shadow, slowly slipping into the past. In his images that almost appear to be in movement, Plasse reminds us that experience is both radiant and ephemeral.
Tod Bryant’s Preservation Trades is a portrait series of craftspeople who are at the heart of the restoration and rehabilitation of historic buildings. While the complex restoration business involves many people and many jobs, Bryant’s photographs are dedicated to documenting the skilled people who do the work with their own hands. Inspired by photographers such as August Sander and Irving Penn, Bryant’s series is an ongoing project giving homage to these individuals.
In the fall of 2022, when Jill Laurie Goodman felt drawn to the seashore, she began to explore the Maine coast around Penobscot Bay, a place she had never been but which held magic from stories she heard read as a child. Working from a glimpse of stone, floating seaweed, or reflected sky, she asked what else is there? What might create a sense of place or an emotional landscape? What makes it all connect?
The Exhibition Lab Exhibition|Part 3 will remain on view through August 26th, 2023. Foley Gallery is open Wednesday through Saturday, 12 pm – 5:30 pm. To request images, please get in touch with the gallery at hello@foleygallery.com