Stephen Galloway
EXHIBITION DATES: NOVEMBER 9th THROUGH JANUARY 5TH, 2008
"Ab Aeterno"
Galloway’s work is about looking at nature, and letting it drive our creative impulse. His photographs are inextricably linked to the plants and forests from which they came. Clarity of visual representation is a key concern in emphasizing the primary physical reality, the 'such-ness' of these materials, which exist long before we come to see them as beautiful or valuable. In these large-scale works Galloway is able to present these materials life size, in a format that begins to reference the magnitude of the forest floor. NextNature has, however, left the forest in order to explore the forces of nature: the pushing, the attracting, the falling. This series makes palpable both the order and the chaos that ripple through existence. ?The work is composed on a large lightbox on the floor of his studio and then photographed straight down using a high resolution scanning back in the place of film. Galloway’s ingenious innovation of combining the scanning process and the digital printing process in this way pushes photography forward in its ability to show detail at large scale. It allows the artist to make images that are less metaphorical in their representation and more direct. This clearer representation supports a sense of 'matter-of-fact-ness' in the work. The materials used have been re-moved: from the forest floor to an even vaster space that is virtual, the space of the imagination, a place of "seeing" the landscape, an issue often forgotten by photographers and their audience. Using these incredibly fine imaging technologies, Galloway works with an astonishing visual clarity at the same time as working fully in the imaginative space. Other times, the materials such as mattress vine, a massive tangle of sticks and strands, will dictate the composition leading the final photograph toward abstraction. Galloway lives and works in San Francisco. This is first solo show with LIMN gallery.
"Ab Aeterno"
Galloway’s work is about looking at nature, and letting it drive our creative impulse. His photographs are inextricably linked to the plants and forests from which they came. Clarity of visual representation is a key concern in emphasizing the primary physical reality, the 'such-ness' of these materials, which exist long before we come to see them as beautiful or valuable. In these large-scale works Galloway is able to present these materials life size, in a format that begins to reference the magnitude of the forest floor. NextNature has, however, left the forest in order to explore the forces of nature: the pushing, the attracting, the falling. This series makes palpable both the order and the chaos that ripple through existence. ?The work is composed on a large lightbox on the floor of his studio and then photographed straight down using a high resolution scanning back in the place of film. Galloway’s ingenious innovation of combining the scanning process and the digital printing process in this way pushes photography forward in its ability to show detail at large scale. It allows the artist to make images that are less metaphorical in their representation and more direct. This clearer representation supports a sense of 'matter-of-fact-ness' in the work. The materials used have been re-moved: from the forest floor to an even vaster space that is virtual, the space of the imagination, a place of "seeing" the landscape, an issue often forgotten by photographers and their audience. Using these incredibly fine imaging technologies, Galloway works with an astonishing visual clarity at the same time as working fully in the imaginative space. Other times, the materials such as mattress vine, a massive tangle of sticks and strands, will dictate the composition leading the final photograph toward abstraction. Galloway lives and works in San Francisco. This is first solo show with LIMN gallery.
