Future Forward

OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY, MARCH 25, 2011, 6:30 - 8:00 P.M.

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

The Silver Eye Center for Photography is pleased to present Future Forward, our first annual members’ exhibition juried by Darren Ching, owner of Klompching Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, and creative director of Photo District News, the award-winning monthly magazine for the professional photographer.

The exhibition is on view from March 22, 2011 through May 7, 2011. The opening reception takes place on Friday, March 25, 2011 from 6:30 - 8:00 p.m. at the Silver Eye galleries on Pittsburgh's South Side, 1015 East Carson Street, Pittsburgh, 15203. Admission is free and open to the public.

Future Forward attracted more than 100 national and international photographers who submitted over 1,000 individual images for consideration. From this extremely impressive pool of artists, Darren Ching selected six photographers for this inaugural members’ exhibition. They are: Susan A. Barnett (New York, NY); Hope Guzzo (Laurel, MD); Nic Lyons (San Francisco, CA); Leigh Merrill (Dallas, TX); Monika Merva (Brooklyn, NY); and Stephen Strom (Sonoita, AZ).

“The six photographers in the exhibition are as diverse in their concern with subject, and approach to photography, as the wide scope of entrants from which they were selected,” said juror Darren Ching. “As different as they are, they do share a common denominator—top quality of execution in their work, well-formed ideas and a high level of uniqueness.”

Ellen Fleurov, Silver Eye’s Executive Director, added: “Future Forward is a testament to the incredible depth of talent that exists within our membership, which includes artists from 36 states and two foreign countries. I’m especially pleased to see that the six photographers range across generations and backgrounds, and that several are just beginning to build their national reputations. Supporting emerging artists is an important part of Silver Eye’s mission and programs.”

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHERS

Susan A. Barnett (New York, NY) is represented by the series Not In Your Face, in which she investigates notions of self and social identity through the types of slogans and images inscribed on the backs of t- shirts. “The act of wearing a t-shirt is a cry out for acceptance. Each person reveals a part of themselves that advertises their hopes, ideals, likes, dislikes, political views, and personal mantras,” said Barnett. “They wear a kind of badge of honor that says, ‘yes, I belong to this group and not the other.’”

Susan A. Barnett has a BA from Marymount College. Her work has been featured in Lenscratch and Popular Photography magazines and exhibited at CLAMPART in New York City and the Newspace Center for Photography in Portland, Oregon.

In the Thresholds series, Hope Guzzo (Laurel, MD) depicts food in various states of violation or decay. In transforming what could easily be quite mundane into something that is unsettlingly provocative, Guzzo explores the dichotomies between attraction and repulsion, sustenance and deprivation, life and mortality.

This spring, Guzzo will receive her BFA in photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, where she has garnered departmental and university-wide honors for her art.

Nic Lyons (San Francisco, CA) is interested in the politically charged landscape – landmarks or places that have been damaged through wear or nature, targets of terrorism, locations of fire and epidemic or contamination. In the project Decommission, Lyons explores the borderlands between civilization, toxic wasteland and areas of gentrification, as found at an abandoned San Francisco naval base.

Nic Lyons received her MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in London, England in 2006, and graduated with a BFA from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, Canada, in 2001. Her work appeared in the book New American Landscapes (2010) as well in magazines such Fabrik, Eleven Eleven and the Graphis Photography Annual 2010, for which she won the Gold Award.

Leigh Merrill (Dallas, TX) began The Streets in 2007, when she was living in the Bay Area. “I started to photograph homes, and eventually photographed thousands,” said Merrill, “and then digitally assembled and reassembled these photographs to create new images. At first these images might look plausible; but closer inspection reveals that they are fabricated, and in fact illogical. These fabrications highlight how our built environments themselves are composites of multiple architectural and landscape styles.”

Leigh Merrill received her BFA from the University of New Mexico in 2001 and her MFA from Mills College in Oakland, California, in 2009. Merrill's work has been seen in group exhibitions at the Phoenix Art Museum, Napa Valley’s diRosa Art & Nature Preserve, the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Ana, California, and the Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle, Washington.

Monika Merva (Brooklyn, NY) spent nine years vividly documenting everyday life at The City of Children, a Hungarian government-run housing facility for those fleeing from abusive and poverty-stricken backgrounds. An American of Hungarian descent, Merva remarked that she “become increasingly impressed by the quiet, and often hidden, power and beauty of this place, a community of people with a background that lends itself to a universal take on the human condition.”

Monika Merva works as a freelance photographer for several magazines, including The New Yorker, Details, and New York Times Magazine. She has exhibited internationally and her work is in public collections in the U.S., Hungary and France. The City of Children is being published by Kehrer Verlag in May of 2011, and the project will be on view at FotoFest Houston in 2012.

Stephen Strom (Sonoita, AZ) has long photographed the Southwestern deserts and the rich histories they encode. A distinguished astronomer with a PhD from Harvard University, Strom commented that he has spent his professional career “perched on remote mountaintops, looking upward mostly, but also contemplating the desert below.” During those times, he “became drawn to, then seduced by the changing patterns of desert lands sculpted by the glancing light of the rising and setting sun: light that reveals forms molded both by millennial forces and yesterday’s cloudburst into undulations of shapes and colors.”

Stephen Strom's work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States and is held in several permanent collections. A monograph, Earth Forms, was published in 2009. He has also collaborated on four other books about the Southwestern landscape.

About the Juror, Darren Ching

Darren Ching’s involvement in the photography industry spans more than a decade. He is the creative director of Photo District News as well as owner of Klompching Gallery in the Dumbo district of Brooklyn, New York. The gallery’s focus is contemporary photography by emerging talent, as well as under-recognized work by established photographers. Its exhibitions have been reviewed in publications such as The New Yorker, Hotshoe, New York Magazine, ArtReview, New York Times, The British Journal of Photography, The Architect's Newspaper, and Modern Painters.

Silver Eye Center for Photography is generously supported by our members and individual donors and by the Allegheny Regional Asset District, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Grable Foundation, The Heinz Endowments, The Pittsburgh Foundation, and Epson America. Broadcast media sponsorship is kindly provided by WYEP/91.3 FM.

Click here to view more photographs from the Future Forward exhibtion.

Images (left to right):

Susan A. Barnett, Budweiser, 2010; Leigh Merrill, Bushes, 2009; Monica Merva, In The Woods, 2002; Stephen Storm, Sandstone Layers, White Pocket, UT, 2010; Hope Guzzo, Tomato, 2010; Nic Lyons, Files, 2010

New Works Gallery Online: March 1 - April 30, 2011
Features: Joyce Lopez , Chicago, IL; Charles Mintz , Cleveland, OH; S. Gayle Stevens , Downers Grove, IL; Mary Dorsey Wanless , Topkea, KS

“Stayed extra night in Pittsburgh to see this…”

– Anthony Gravante, San Francisco, CA