Ben Alper

Photography | 2019

Ben Alper's series "Conflation" is a series of digital composites that originate from multiple images of the same object or space. Depicting marginal or derelict urban sites, the pictures represent a patchwork of decisions made behind the camera. While these pieces upend traditional notions of the singular photographic trace, they nevertheless constitute a series of imprints.  They attempt to synthesize redundant, often ordinary photographs into something transcendent.  By layering, erasing and cutting away to reveal information below, these hybrid works vacillate between presence and absence and construction and deconstruction. Stepping away from the medium’s subtractive character, the pieces in “Conflation” turn toward an additive approach to image-construction.  However, with each accumulated layer, a new kind of collapse occurs.  The result is a formal and conceptual flattening, a tangle of images still tethered to their source, but fundamentally changed.

Size

24 x 16" - Unframed 

Materials

Pigment print

Edition of 3

Authenticity

Signed by the artist

Ben Alper

Photography | 2019

Ben Alper's series "Conflation" is a series of digital composites that originate from multiple images of the same object or space. Depicting marginal or derelict urban sites, the pictures represent a patchwork of decisions made behind the camera. While these pieces upend traditional notions of the singular photographic trace, they nevertheless constitute a series of imprints.  They attempt to synthesize redundant, often ordinary photographs into something transcendent.  By layering, erasing and cutting away to reveal information below, these hybrid works vacillate between presence and absence and construction and deconstruction. Stepping away from the medium’s subtractive character, the pieces in “Conflation” turn toward an additive approach to image-construction.  However, with each accumulated layer, a new kind of collapse occurs.  The result is a formal and conceptual flattening, a tangle of images still tethered to their source, but fundamentally changed.

Size

24 x 16" - Unframed 

Materials

Pigment print

Edition of 3

Authenticity

Signed by the artist

Ben Alper

Photography | 2020

Ben Alper's series "Conflation" is a series of digital composites that originate from multiple images of the same object or space. Depicting marginal or derelict urban sites, the pictures represent a patchwork of decisions made behind the camera. While these pieces upend traditional notions of the singular photographic trace, they nevertheless constitute a series of imprints.  They attempt to synthesize redundant, often ordinary photographs into something transcendent.  By layering, erasing and cutting away to reveal information below, these hybrid works vacillate between presence and absence and construction and deconstruction. Stepping away from the medium’s subtractive character, the pieces in “Conflation” turn toward an additive approach to image-construction.  However, with each accumulated layer, a new kind of collapse occurs.  The result is a formal and conceptual flattening, a tangle of images still tethered to their source, but fundamentally changed.

Size

24 x 16" - Unframed 

Materials

Pigment print

Edition of 3

Authenticity

Signed by the artist

SHELLEY SMITH

Mixed Media | 2018

 
Born in 1979 in Raleigh N.C., Shelley Smith is an artist, curator, and arts administrator. She graduated with a Master of Art and Design from North Carolina State University College of Design in 2016. Her curatorial projects include the one-year activation known as The Pink Building Project, and the exhibitions and programming at Anchorlight, where she is the co-founder and Creative Director. Smith is also the co-founder and Director of the Brightwork Fellowship Program, a year long artist residency located within Anchorlight that focuses on service and professional development within the visual arts.

Smith’s own artistic practice serves as the foundation for all her other creative endeavors. Primarily working with the combination of cloth and digital techniques, her practice reflects the inborn ties between our individual selves and nature.

Size

15 x 11 inches 

Materials

Digital print, hand embroidered on satin, quilted and mounted on board

Authenticity

Hand signed by the artist