Scott Nedrelow
Polyfocal
June 30 - July 31, 2016
210 Rivington Str,
NY 10002
Through a triangulation of video, photography and painting techniques, Scott Nedrelow's post-photographic practice is involved with the technologies and materials of contemporary digital imaging, specifically the depiction of - and our relationship to - light. Polyfocal features two main bodies of work: new videos displayed on Ultra High-Definition TV screens entitled "Viewfinder Sculpture", and recent examples from his ongoing series of works made from photo paper and Epson printer ink.
In his signature "Afterlight" works, Nedrelow subverts the use of materials common to digital printing by extracting CMYK inkjet pigments from their commercial cartridges, then airbrushing them onto freestanding coils of "premium luster" Epson photo paper from a fixed standpoint. The inkjet ink is applied in subtle layers of alternating CMYK colors. The order of application changes the final color, making it possible to explore color permutations of the Epson ink set during the spraying process. Expanding this approach, the "Polyfocal" paintings employ identical materials, but instead the paper is reconfigured into cone-like shapes before being sprayed on four sides with ink. Both series exploit the capacity of these materials to represent something photographic while denying the use of the photographic processes associated with them. When unfurled and mounted, the residual spray patterns effectively create a photographic document of its previous form - parallel columns of hazy pigment dividing a stark white field in the "Afterlight" series; four radiating bands of abutting color, each representing a side of a once voluminous cone in the "Polyfocal" works. Rather than depicting space with light through paint, or availing light in service of a photochemical technique, light here becomes the active ingredient in revealing a subtly painted but "photographic" afterimage.
For the exhibition, Nedrelow also expands his recent series of video works entitled "Viewfinder Sculpture" where the frame of the TV is transformed into a camera viewfinder that shows what is directly behind the object. The videos document colorful seamless paper typically used in commercial photography as backdrops to document product. On the floor and wall behind the TVs are luster inkjet prints that function as a photographic stand-in for the matte seamless paper backdrops. The inkjet prints are the same size as the viewfinder TV screens, but are curved between the wall and floor, creating a shifting relationship between the upright frame of the viewfinder screen and the documented photograph. The paper extends just beyond the monitor's frame and onto the floor, their scale, color and edges corresponding exactly to the prerecorded images presented on their respective screens. Shot in studio with an Ultra High-Definition camera, the video's only motion is a gradual shift of direct light from a window as it rakes across each monochrome cyclorama. In these works Nedrelow is interested in the way a real-time experience of light in space interfaces with a transplanted reconstruction captured outside of a temporal reality. To reproduce light in video is to illustrate changing light over time, which is naturally created by the rotation of the Earth on its axis. The faithful translation of such conditions is further complicated by the technological makeup and constrictions of the TV apparatus itself. Here the means of presentation becomes the very thing represented, creating a perceptual incongruity between space and site; virtual and real; image and object.
Scott Nedrelow (b. 1975 Rockhill, SC) received his BA from Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent exhibitions include the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Halsey McKay, New York; Kate Werble Gallery, New York; KANSAS, New York; The Soap Factory, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts; The Chicago Artist's Coalition, Chicago. He is a 2015/16 McKnight Visual Artist Fellow and a past recipient of a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
* All images courtesy the artist, and KANSAS