Thursday, February 16, 2023, 10:00 AM – Sunday, July 02, 2023, 5:00 PM
Featured Exhibitions Gallery, Henry Radford Hope Wing, First Floor
Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

How does one experience a photograph that appears “unphotographic”? Focusing on the material and tactile properties of the medium, Direct Contact: Cameraless Photography Now is the first contemporary survey to examine cameraless photography across generations, cultures, and ideologies. Referred to as photograms or contact prints, cameraless photographs are made using analogue photography’s foundational elements: light, chemistry, and light-sensitive surfaces.

Presenting recent work by over 40 artists–including Yto Barrada, Iñaki Bonillas, Ellen Carey, Hernease Davis, Sheree Hovsepian, Roberto Huarcaya, Kei Ito, Dakota Mace, Fabiola Menchelli, Lisa Oppenheim, Daisuke Yokota, among many others–Direct Contact highlights many emerging global artists and features primarily women-identifying artists. Unfolding across five sections–Age, Scale, Form, Texture, and Value–Direct Contact positions cameraless photography as both an intellectual cornerstone in the medium’s history and an enduring and important force within contemporary art.

The exhibition is curated by Lauren Richman, Assistant Curator of Photography.

The Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, is proud to present Dark Moves: Fabiola Menchelli & Heather Watkins. This intimate exhibition consists of newly-commissioned work by Mexico City artist Fabiola Menchelli and Northwest artist Heather Watkins.

Saturday, February 25 at 2:00 pm, Reed Chapel, Eliot Hall
Conversation with artists Fabiola Menchelli and Heather Watkins, and exhibition curator Stephanie Snyder, followed by a public reception at the Cooley.

On view February 16—May 14
The Cooley is open to the public Thursday—Sunday, 12:00 to 5:00 pm.
Nestled in the Reed College library, it is always free. Families are welcome!

Menchelli and Watkins are artists deeply invested in the sensory and perceptual possibilities of light—along with its orbital complements, darkness and shadow. With artistic methodologies drawn from poetry, cosmogony, and scientific experimentation, the artists modulate the luminal in pursuit of unknown outcomes. Resultant forms of disappearance, reversal, and refraction communicate across the entirety of the Cooley—particularly in the center, where a hexagonal room with open ends echoes the internal angles and shadows of Menchelli and Watkins’ work.​​ As viewers move through, and around, the hexagon, their bodies draw the symbol of the lemniscate—the infinity symbol (∞). Dark Moves seeks to emulate the ways that shadow becomes a medium in the artists’ hands—contouring, obscuring, and unfolding their work across the deep, azure walls of the museum.

Menchelli and Watkins employ color, line, and saturation—dematerializing modernist geometries, and transforming planarity into ascending angles and curves. Their experiments produce enigmatic effects and lacunae—voids and folds that touch and trace one another. In Dark Moves, Menchelli brings new dimensionality to her translucent color photograms, made entirely in the dark—folding and manipulating the photosensitive paper. These alchemical agents become embodied sculptures mounted on a stainless steel substructure that thrust their geometric volumes, casting shadows on the wall. In the darkened surroundings of the space, Watkins transforms the dynamic linearity of her ink-based drawings into rising, swooping organic forms that radiate wild shadows. These sculptural forms accompany numinous gold reliefs created by imperceptible forces, and small works on paper that oscillate between a fluid lyricism and darker visions of interior compression.

Over the last two years, the artists and the curator have engaged in an extensive collaborative process, working between Portland and Mexico City. This ongoing conversation has shaped every aspect of the exhibition and its extended programing, including the forthcoming catalog by Mexico City designer Priscila Vanneuville.

In Dark Moves, seeing is not believing. Here, to “see” is to search for ways of knowing that may only be accessed through shadow, the subconscious, and the ancient iconographies of pleasure and pain at the heart of the visual imagination.

More information

Velar a Verde (Through the Green Veil), 2023
Fabiola Menchelli

Material Art Fair, Vol. 9
PROXYCO Gallery, Stand A18
Expo Reforma, CDMX
February 9th–12th, 2023

Velar a verde es una instalación de Fabiola Menchelli que toma distancia de las convenciones del aparato fotográfico con el objetivo de expandir sus lenguajes y funciones. Las piezas —configuradas a partir de los dobleces del propio papel fotográfico— pierden su carácter “óptimo” e impecable para tomar un lugar tridimensional. Esta acción propone una ruptura con las hegemonías de la fotografía: incluye el error o la falla como herramienta de indagación en los intersticios de la imagen. La obra replica un mismo acto “el pliegue”, pero en su repetición ese gesto se resignifica y abre un espacio de negociación entre el soporte, el color, la luz y la arquitectura.
 
Entre suaves degradados aparece un telón enmarcado por la saturación del magenta, pigmento presente en las piezas gracias a su opuesto: un filtro verde. La exploración de los límites del rosa intenso toma un lugar impetuoso que se desborda del objeto artístico a la totalidad del sitio, y dirige la mirada del espectador hacia los blancos, a la falta de tiempo y contenido en la imagen. El blanco en las salas de exposición, refiere a aquella ausencia presente que privilegia y sostiene a la obra en cuestión. Esta tensión entre el pigmento, la espacialidad y la mirada, hace un guiño consciente a las acciones y prejuicios asociados a la feminidad, a lo que es valide como mujer artista. Menchelli subvierte la función del color magenta: a través de la acumulación y ocupación deja suspendida cualquier asociación previa. La artista nos conduce hacia ese “en medio” existente entre la obra y aquello que la rodea. Hay una pérdida de absolutos que permite ver la interioridad desde afuera o viceversa. La instalación se convierte en un espacio liminal, una antesala de lo que está por venir.
 
Laura Orozco

Fabiola Menchelli, Omar Barquet, Madeline Jiménez, Omar Rodríguez-Graham, Sergio Gutiérrez, Ishmael Randall-Weeks, Pablo López Luz, Mauro Giaconi.

ZONA MACO, 2023
Arroniz Gallery, Booth C109
Centro Citibanamex, Ciudad de México
February 8 – 12, 2023

Imaginar la Imagen
Escuela Superior de Cine @escine_mx
Mesones 54, Centro Histórico, CDMX
Inauguración Miércoles 1 de Febrero a las 6pm
1 al 28 de Febrero 2023
L – V de 10 a 17h.

@mauricioalejo #joseluisvuevas @barbarafoulkes_ @mayagoded @silviagruner #arturohernandezalcazar @karlaleyvaleal #marcoslopez @nicolalorusso6010 @arenititas #fabiolamenchelli #fernandomontielklint @nirvanapazmx @oswaldorruiz @___i_l_a_n___ @pavkasegura

algún paso por el espacio 

Proyecto Pícaro
10 de febrero al 25 de marzo
Parral 32, Colonia Condesa, CDMX
Horarios de la galería: jueves y viernes 5-7pm, sábado 3-5pm, o por previa cita
Inauguración: 10 de febrero de 7 – 9

Taller para artistas emergentes
Imparte: Fabiola Menchelli.
Invitadas especiales: Romina Resuche, Carmen Cerberos y Laura Orozco.
Fechas del Taller: 31 Agosto – 7 Diciembre 2022
Horario del Taller: Miércoles, 17:30 – 20:30 hora de la Ciudad de México (UTC-5).
Formato: Taller impartido en 16 sesiones virtuales de 3 hrs. a la semana.
Todxs lxs artistas seleccionadxs recibirán una beca completa para participar en el taller, gracias a nuestros generosos patrocinadores.
Bases: https://fabiolamenchelli.com/circulo
Solicitud: Google Forms

Subscribete a nuestra lista de correos para recibir una notificación sobre las siguiente edición:
Suscripción correo Círculo de Crítica de Obra.

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