Copyright Shu Ikeda

Photo-based Artists at VOLTA NY
It’s art fair season in NYC and I always like to see how photography and video are represented amongst the participating galleries. My first stop is VOLTA NY. 

Realist painter Shu Ikeda takes photographs of floral landscapes and cuts them to produce alternative shapes, voids and shadows that create a new space and allude to the relationship between painting and photography. Realist painter Takahiro Yamamoto’s “Re:view” series features portraits of old photographs that are haunting in their precision. Irit Batsry showed a version of her film installations and an ongoing photographic series from material shot by the artist on the film sets of director Karim Ainouz in Brazil. Matthew Conradt‘s collages found images onto mylar constructing narratives around the decline of North American life.

Takahiro Yamamoto, “Gemination” (2013) pencil and watercolor on board

Other artists of note (though not necessarily using photography) include: mixed-media artist Zoe Charlton who constructs “sexualized human/object hybrids”; conceptual artist Robert Chamberlain whose collapsing porcelain vases are decorated by hand using cake decorating tools; Katja Loher’s video-sculptures encased in hand-blown glass bubbles challenges us to look at the moving visuals from another viewpoint and Willie Cole‘s sculptures made of domestic objects like irons and high-heeled shoes.

One of 25 image composites from from Iguatu, Ceará, Brazil, 2006 Copyright Irit Batsry

Also happening at VOLTA NY: ARC Magazine will present a one night exhibition under the theme of “Metanoia: Practices of Exhaustion” on the evening of March 8th, 2014. Starting at 8pm ET, the exhibition will support the works of Caribbean and diaspora-based artists whose practices intersect various disciplines including New Media, Performance Art and Socially Engaged Practices. View the Facebook event page for details.

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Dodge & Burn is a blog dedicated to documenting a more inclusive history of photography and supporting the work of photographers of color with photographer interviews.

This blog is published by visual artist and writer, Qiana Mestrich. For regular updates on diversity in photography history, follow Qiana on Twitter @mestrich, Like the Dodge & Burn Blog page on Facebook or subscribe to Dodge & Burn by email.