Overview
TRANSFORMER proudly presents our fourth annual DC-based artist solo exhibition: Gentle Reader, an installation of work by Molly Springfield
In 1833, while on honeymoon in Italy, William Henry Fox Talbot tried to sketch the landscape surrounding Lake Como with the aid of a camera lucida. But, in an age in which skill at drawing was highly prized, Talbot was a terrible draughtsman. Despite the beauty of the images, he later recalled, "I found that my faithless pencil had only left traces on the paper melancholy to behold." He speculated "how charming it would be to cause these images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper! And why should it not be possible?"
Talbot was a brilliant polymath who made important discoveries in fields as diverse as calculus, astronomy, and the translation of cuneiform texts, but it was his frustration with his inability to capture nature with a pencil that led him to develop what he called 'the art of photogenic drawing'. Among other things, Talbot invented the photographic negative from which positive prints could be made - allowing for the mass reproduction of images. He chronicled these discoveries in The Pencil of Nature (1844), the world's first photographically-illustrated book.
In the Gentle Reader exhibition at Transformer, Molly Springfield draws on Talbot's life and work to create a dialogue between past and present, exploring the liminal territory between reproduction and originality, objectivity and subjectivity, and technology and labor. The result is a unique mix of conceptual drawing, experimental photography, and historical homage.
Gentle Reader includes large drawings based on the introduction to the Pencil of Nature, as well as smaller drawings of photocopies of secondary sources discussing Talbot's photographic discoveries. In addition to these drawings, Springfield presents the results of her own experiments with calotype or Talbotype photography
- sepia-toned sunprints of cutouts from The Pencil of Nature and Talbot's personal notebooks. Viewers are also invited to take home letterpress-printed bookmarks specially designed by the artist for this exhibition.
Molly Springfield was born in 1977 and received her M.F.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in 2004. She is represented by Moti Hasson Gallery (New York), Steven Wolf Fine Arts (San Francisco), and Thomas Robertello Gallery (Chicago), where her next solo show opens in April 2007. Springfield wishes to thank all the summer 2006 artists-in-residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, where she either created or conceived all the work in the Gentle Reader exhibition.
Incorporating the influence of Dada and the artistic approaches of Kurt Schwitters' collaging in his work, Chris states, "I'm attempting to aestheticize the cultural issues of the 14th street area where Transformer is located. The MLK assassination riots and the turmoil of the late 1960's are explored in transfer rubbings. Additional works on paper and larger India ink drawings are meant to present the friction between African and European sensibilities. Over all, the works mean to comment on the creativity and destruction that friction has produced."
Piero Passacantando was born in Rome, Italy in 1979. At the age of three, he and his mother moved to Milan, where he spent his formative years. He developed an early interest in drawing and as a young teenager he was very fascinated by the graphic aspects of comics, cartoons and videogames. Later, his interest moved to graffiti, which had a very strong anti-establishment connotation. In the mid 90's the hip-hop scene was blooming in Milan, and graffiti provided a tool for many teenagers to express artistic inclinations in ways that challenged the status quo. In 1997, at the age of 18, Piero moved with his father to Washington DC, where he attended the Corcoran School of Art. The school's conceptual approach as well as the international community of artists had a very strong impact on him, providing a key to open up new doors in his artistic development. Graduating in 2001, he traveled and moved to New York City in 2002 to explore the artistic scene of the city. He moved back to Washington DC in 2004 where he now lives and works in Takoma Park. He has been exhibiting both nationally and internationally. Upcoming shows include an exchange between artist from Baltimore, Richmond and Washington DC, and a solo show in Milan, Italy.
Piero states, "I work in a variety of media, including painting, installation and video. I create my artwork 'openly', without being concerned about formal unity between individual works. My artistic process gravitates around the creation of inter-related reflections on the possibilities of artistic expression and communication, rather than specific statements on arbitrary themes. My art is investigative rather than explicative. I feel life is ultimately ironically and tragically mysterious and multifaceted. I want my art to reflect my perception of life."
Lisa Marie Thalhammer relocated to DC from the flatlands of St. Louis MO in 2004. She received her BFA with honors from the University of Kansas. There she received numerous awards including the Amsden Award, the Hollander Family Foundation Award, the Daniel Macmorris Scholarship, the Warner Ferguson Service Scholarship and the Jacobs Prize. She has shown at ART Coop and Venus Envy, located in her hometown of St. Louis MO. Her most recent solo exhibition, Fully Loaded: New Works by Lisa Marie Thalhammer, was located at Studio One Eight in Washington DC.
Lisa Marie states, "My work challenges passive representations of women in Western culture by placing them in untraditional roles. Women boxers are only accepted in contemporary culture by a very exclusive group of sports enthusiasts. By combining violent strength and feminine beauty my work deconstructs conventional notions of gender, identify and power. This work was inspired by the abundant amount of strong women I am surrounded by on a daily basis."
