Sight lines

Jessica Mallios

In Residence: Jan 21 – Mar 24, 2014

Exhibition: Mar 20 – May 18, 2014


How would you describe the process of creating your works at Artpace?

I’m interested in philosophies of seeing and the frameworks for how we understand image and object relationships. While at Artpace, I’ve been thinking about relationships between material and time. The works in the show play off one another; for instance the glass works I think of as a kind of live camera/live photograph while the prints reveal stages of unfixed photographic paper. There’s something about the photograph as both a thing to see and a thing to see with that really interests me. I used a large format camera to produce the images, so the experience of looking, of working with a very deliberate apparatus, is extended to the works in the show…the physicality of the camera informs an acute sense of positioning.

How did the traditional action of “viewing” differ when creating these works?

I’ve been researching the histories of spectacle and more specifically, early uses of viewing chambers and displays in world’s fair exhibitions. San Antonio was the site of the 1968 World’s Fair, also known as the HemisFair, and featured the Tower of the Americas. I’m interested in past, utopian aspirations that place emphasis on a desired vantage or viewpoint. How does a vantage become authoritative? To what degree can a physical framework be traced historically? For instance, the history of the panorama comes out of an evolving relation of the human to the horizon. The video work in the show was filmed from the Tower of the Americas. The slow rotation of that structure made me think about photographic mechanisms like the steadicam and how inscribed systems of viewing are in certain architecture.

Glass is a key material used in the show. What was your interest in its familiarity to the camera?

I am exploring the relationship between the surface of the photograph and the image it represents. Similarly, glass is a material subject to be looked through and also looked at simultaneously. Because glass is part of the makeup of a camera, it is tethered to the history of photography and seeing. With the works in the exhibition, I was thinking about ways of extending the experience of seeing beyond the fixed image, into a physical space, where glass becomes both a reference to the camera but also something like a live photograph, both reflective and translucent. The conditions of light, time, and viewer position mark subtle shifts in color and space.

Artist

Jessica Mallios

Austin, Texas, USA

Jessica Mallios’ photographs and video work examine how objects are seen—dislocating them, suspending their recognition for the viewer, and exploring the relationship between spectacle and artifice. Mallios holds an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College and a BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Her work has been presented in many solo and group exhibitions such as For An Experience of Wholeness (2013) at the Digital Media Gallery, Lycoming College in Williamsport; Contemporary Photographic Practice and the Archive (2013) at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin; X Y Z – The Geometric Impulse in Abstract Art (2012) at the Torrance Art Museum; and Perspectives 168 (2010) at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.  She is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at The Ohio State University in Columbus.
Rhombus, 2012, Video Still, Color Video, silent, loop, Courtesy of the Artist

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Curator

Rita Gonzalez

Los Angeles, California, USA

Rita Gonzalez is the Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. From 2005-2006, she served as Adjunct Curator of Contemporary Art at the Orange County Museum of Art. From 2002-2004, she was the Coordinator of Arts Projects at the University of California, Los Angeles Chicano Studies Research Center, where she contributed to A Ver: Revisioning Art History, the first arts monograph series devoted to Latino artists. From 2001-2002, she provided editorial and research support to Los Angeles-based contemporary artist Mike Kelley. She has taught at several Los Angeles universities, including California Institute of the Arts, University of California, Irvine, and University of Southern California. Gonzalez received a C. Phil. from University of California, Los Angeles and an MFA from University of California, San Diego.

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