In Absentia
Gareth Mackay
March 25-April 2, 2023

Opening Reception March 25 6-9pm

“In Absentia” explores and questions our ideas about photography through three discrete, standalone series. Each series leverages the photographic medium as a starting point, then spans over modernist tenets, blurring discursive boundaries with painting and conceptual practices in the process.

Memoria Abstractum removes clear depiction from the image, creating works upon which the viewer may (more) freely project their memories of time, of place, of people, of things. Deep and effusive colors that merge with one another also serve to promote a phenomenological reaction to the images more normally associated with abstract expressionist painting. 

Photography’s presumptive depictive power is often conflated with the perfect memory of an event, however, even the most clearly taken photograph loses its power to invoke a perfect memory over time. What was the occasion? Why were they there? Who was there with them? Can two people look at the same photograph, argue each of these points and both be correct?

Unseen Landscapes explores the vistas and hidden worlds behind the surfaces of everyday structures and found objects. By focusing beyond and behind the surface, the camera unlocks vistas and forms not visible to the naked eye; revealing and presenting these images into the physical world via large-format prints entices participation and interaction with these seemingly unseen planes of existence.

Benches takes an alternate path to abstraction, restoring photography’s power to perfectly fix the view in front of the lens; however, clear depiction does not necessarily equate to clear meaning.   Images of benches found inside and around seven fine art museums do not provide clear and absolute meaning within their individual frames. Even when viewed as a serial work, any meaning attributed to the individual portraits, or the series as a whole, is speculative, shifting and collapsing in on itself when the images are rearranged, changing the context of the work in the process despite the images themselves remaining resolutely fixed.