Line, Shape, Form, Repeat
Line, Shape, Form, Repeat
Slemmons Gallery
March 26, 2022 to May 7, 2022
For Line, Shape, Form, Repeat, Juan Fernandez used an 11” x 14” camera from the Slemmons Camera Archive as a bridge between traditional analog artmaking and modern technology. This antique camera has witnessed many spectacles in its one hundred year life span, and this project is an attempt to create something the camera has never seen.
The basic elements of design can connect and transcend multiple cultures and civilizations and are used to communicate the simplest or most complex of messages. Since the days of a single finger dragging along the dirt, the line or mark has been core to the concept of communication. A mark is a single movement that is intended to illustrate a thought, photographically speaking. Here, the mark is used to build the exposure of light in certain areas of the image. Each exposure required the loading of different masks while light-painting a wall with a flashlight. Another element was added by including a series of parallel lines that would serve as a rudimentary mark for certain compositions. The use of in-camera masks, long exposures and multiple exposures created an unlimited field of possible compositions.
Ultimately, the results are a combination of modern technology, such as laser-cut masks and 3D printed film holders, with the traditional techniques of the analog darkroom, the use of multiple exposure and painting with light. The binding ingredient was this choreographed process born from experimentation, creating a project that explores simple shapes and marks in a meaningful way.
Line, Shape, Form, Repeat is part of an ongoing series of photography exhibitions in Slemmons Gallery in which contemporary photographers use antique cameras from the Rod Slemmons Camera Archive to create new bodies of work. This series is offered in partnership with The Chicago Cluster Project.
Juan Fernandez is an artist based in Elgin, IL. He is currently the Director of Art and Design and Gallery Curator for Elgin Community College. As an art educator, he has taught at numerous regional colleges and universities. His work references the perceptions of form, structure, and order in common materials and subject matter.
His photographs are in the collection of Columbia College Chicago, the Rockford Art Museum, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, and in The Midwest Photographers Project at The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, IL.
He has also been exhibited in numerous national and international shows including the Catherine Edelman Gallery, Rockford Art Museum, Boecker Contemporary in Heidelberg, Germany, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, the Griffin Museum of Photography, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, Angelika Studios in Buckinghamshire, England, and The Houston Center for Photography.
Juan Fernandez is an artist based in Elgin, IL. He is currently the Director of Art and Design and Gallery Curator for Elgin Community College. As an art educator, he has taught at numerous regional colleges and universities. His work references the perceptions of form, structure, and order in common materials and subject matter.
His photographs are in the collection of Columbia College Chicago, the Rockford Art Museum, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, and in The Midwest Photographers Project at The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, IL.
He has also been exhibited in numerous national and international shows including the Catherine Edelman Gallery, Rockford Art Museum, Boecker Contemporary in Heidelberg, Germany, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, the Griffin Museum of Photography, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, Angelika Studios in Buckinghamshire, England, and The Houston Center for Photography.
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