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July 23, 2022 — August 13, 2022
Still Life With Inedibles — Mitch Eckert
Exhibition Gallery presents a solo exhibition featuring 20 works that showcase the artist's mastery of historical photographic processes. The collection encompasses copper plate photogravure and palladium toned kallitype prints, executed on premium archival papers including Hahnemühle Copperplate White, Hahnemühle Platinum Rag, and Arches Platine. This exhibition demonstrates the enduring beauty and technical precision of these traditional printmaking methods, offering viewers an intimate exploration of analog photography's rich textural and tonal possibilities.
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Barbara Wilson holds a BFA from Moore College of Art in Philadelphia, an MFA from SUNY Buffalo in association with the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York, and an MA in Art Education K–12 from Adelphi University in Garden City, New York.
Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times and exhibited internationally, including shows in Paris, Brazil, and Australia. Wilson received a New York State CAPS Grant in Photography and the P.A.B. Memorial European Fellowship from Moore College of Art. Her artwork has been published in Printmaking in the Sun, Saturday Review, Manhattan Arts, and John Oates's autobiography Change of Seasons, among others.
"What do you see?" "Wonderful things!" was the exchange between Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter upon the first glimpse into Tutankhamun's tomb. They had no idea what would be there. All the other pharaohs' tombs had been looted thousands of years before. Slowly, through painstaking work, Tut's life began to become clearer—but so many mysteries remained.
Pinhole photography is somewhat similar. There is always an unknown element within one of the long exposures. It may be the light. It may be the movement. It may be the infinite depth of field. I took my pinhole camera along on a journey through ancient Egypt. Everywhere I looked, I saw wonderful things. Here are some of those magical moments. They may be images of stones, but yet they seem to have a story that echoes from the past.
Mitch Eckert is an award-winning artist whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and included in a variety of publications, from textbooks to journals. After receiving his BFA in photography and sculpture from Indiana University, he went on to earn an MFA from Ohio University, focusing on photography and printmaking. His technical knowledge of photography is well rooted in the medium's rich historic processes, including his masterful works in kallitype. For Mitch, the choice of photographic equipment, process, and materials need to have a good marriage with concept and content. His exploration in the genre of still life has been ongoing for more than 25 years. Other projects revolve around cabinets of curiosities, botanic and formal gardens, as well as natural history museums. His work is held in the collections of 21c Museum, Butler Institute of American Art, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Mitch Eckert currently lives and works in Louisville, Kentucky, where he is an associate professor of art teaching all things photographic.
Everlasting Remains of the Eternal Meal
Everlasting Remains of the Eternal Meal is a series of kallitypes of altered artificial fruit and produce containers recast in paper pulp. The original plastic containers were used to store and transport luscious fruits to my local big-box grocery, while the artificial fruit were sourced at a craft shop. Unlike the half-eaten meals in Dutch still lifes, which serve as memento mori or reminders of death, these plastic containers—and even the Styrofoam niche I have constructed—will never really die and decay, serving instead as reminders of our complicity in the casual destruction and death of our planet.
Working within the tradition of still life presents both challenges and opportunities. I imagine these tableaux as freshly discovered, in a modern equivalent of Pompeii. I craft and control each step of the process: from replicating the plastic food containers in paper pulp and altering the artificial foods, to creating the niche and setting the stage, to sculpting with light while making the photographs. By printing in the historic photographic kallitype technique, the organic chemical process complements and contrasts the inorganic subject matter depicted.
