Visual Studies Workshop, 31 Prince Street, Rochester NY 14607
Tel:585-442-8676 Fax: 585-442-1992 x101
e-mail:info@vsw.org

VISUAL STUDIES WORKSHOP: TRAVELING EXHIBITIONS

Visual Studies Workshop's traveling exhibitions present issues of current and historical interest in imagemaking. Our fully-fabricated exhibitions are offered at at reasonable fees. All prints are matted to museum standards, framed with plexiglass, and crated for travel. Introductory panels, checklists, publicity materials and condition report forms are supplied with each exhibition.

Scheduling: Contact info@vsw.org for more information, packets, and availability of exhibitions.

Terms: Contracts will be sent when dates are agreed upon. Rental fee and deposit: The standard rental period is six weeks (except where noted) with an additional week for installation and two days for dismantling. A non-refundable deposit of is due with the signed contract. The balance is due within seven days of the exhibition's opening date. In some cases the rental fee can be waived upon purchase of print(s) from the exhibition. All fees are subject to change. Catalogs/posters: A limited number of complimentary catalogues and posters are provided with many of the exhibitions. Additional catalogues and posters are available from the Workshop for resale or publicity. Shipping: Arrangements vary with each exhibition. In most cases, if the exhibition is originating from and returning to Visual Studies Workshop the renting institution is responsible for round-trip shipping. If the exhibition is coming from or continuing to another institution the renting institution is responsible for outgoing shipping.

The Visual Studies Workshop is funded, in part, by grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

Jake in Transition from Female to Male, Clarissa Sligh

(Click on images for larger view)

(Click on images for larger view)

A retail window torso, fragments from Renaissance paintings, photographs of individuals lost in the Holocaust, scantily dressed male models featured on a billboard are a sampling of images from Joan Lyons' installation "Representations." Exhibited in large grids, this multiple image installation investigates the defining narratives of Western Art and the images that we as a society construct to represent and empower ourselves.

"These images are samplings from the representational systems of the Western mimetic tradition that forms our cultural bias. Photographed, over a period of five years, throughout Western Europe and North America they reflect on the treasure houses of great museums. The focus shifts, in part, to city streets as the essential representational narratives migrate to a commercially-driven media culture in the late twentieth century. To what extent does the Christian salvation myth define our present-day culture? How has that culture been shaped by a history in which women were absenced from the creation of images?

"I have filtered images through my consciousness as well as my lens, made time contiguous in not-quite-arbitrary grids and placed the whole back into an exhibition space. Perhaps this is a way to claim a piece of this overwhelming tradition as my own."

—Joan Lyons

Rental fee: $2,000; Number of frames: 79 (to be assembled in large grids); Frame size: 23.5x17.75"; Space requirements: approx. 55 running feet; Insurance value: $47,400; Weight: approx.350 lbs. Availability: Currently available.

 

Mark Klett: Selected Landscapes

Landscape photography is never a neutral pursuit. It is always about someone’s perception of place and world-view; Afterall, a photographer is not just a witness to space but a participant as well. For my part, I’m interested in the collision points between land, history and time.

The first of these photographs—currently on exhibit here—came in 1982 after I finished work on the “Rephotographic Survey Project.” That project paired nineteenth century geographical survey photographs with new photographs made at the same sites and from the same vantage points. This combination of two similar but different images of the same place revealed more than a century of change. As my new work evolved, I meant to tell my own story. The act of making the photographs became my own photographic survey. My purpose was not to perpetuate older images or even their ideas but to engage a photographic legacy in a different kind of dialogue about space and time. The photographs are meant to reference an earlier era while portraying a completely contemporary landscape.

The materials used include Polaroid Type 55 positive/negative film. The film was developed on the spot after each exposure to produce a negative and proof positive image. It is the pre-digital counterpoint to the wet-plate collodion process used in an era when photographs were developed on site, assuring a connection between process and place. The edges of the Polaroid negatives were preserved as a reference to that intersection.

These photographs span approximately twenty years, a period during which I worked on many other projects. But this effort became a particular focus, a visual diary that became self-sustaining. The work developed under the influence of many changing ideas, some from experience others from collaborative projects. More ideas came from reading works of history, geography, natural science, contemporary writing, and journals about current issues. I continue to be greatly influenced by discoveries that announce themselves from the work itself over the years.

Where I live, open space, continued human intervention and change have had direct influence on peoples’ lives. It is the same everywhere, but in the American West these forces combine in ways that I find especially compelling. The forces that affect the land are often cause for dismay and they cannot be ignored. But there is also room for enjoyment and humor and wonder. Photographs confirm that place still matters, that one’s experience in the land is still a central issue of life, and that relationship to the land is key to enlightenment as well as survival. That is a lot to expect from something like a photograph. But at its best, I believe that landscape photography is a form of commentary and reveals a passion engendering hope—perhaps our best resource.

 —Mark Klett (from the exhibition statement)

 

Rental fee: $3,500; Number of frames: 31; Frame size: 24x28" (26) and 28x24" (5); Space requirements: approx. 100 running feet; Insurance Value: $60,000    
Availability: Currently available.

Ryan Weideman: In My Taxi

Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1925 - 1972)

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