Shift / Plane / Density

Shift / Plane / Density
Shaina Gates & Tessa Stewart
February 2-25, 2024
First Friday Opening Reception, Friday, February 2, 6-9 pm

Shift / Plane / Density exploits the fundamentals of photography to arrive at new ways of thinking about material. The works presented here offer a glimpse of what is possible when an idea is deconstructed or reorganized in the pursuit of creating something original. Whether by imposing novel conditions on long-established systems, introducing randomness, or combining digital and analog processes, both artists expand the definition of photography.

Tessa Stewart

Each panorama starts as multiple mordançage prints, the result of a destructive bleach-based process used to lift and manipulate the emulsion of a silver gelatin print. The prints are scanned and then combined by landscape-generating software resulting in a single, unified image. Every step moves further from a representative original into complete abstraction. Even though these new topographies are complete fabrications they are familiar, referencing moonscapes, or maps, or oil sands, they are unsettling.

Tessa Stewart is a Philadelphia-based artist, holding a special interest in lens based media.

TessaVictoriaStewart.com
tessastewart1995@gmail.com

Shaina Gates

To make this work black and white sheet film was folded, exposed to light, and then chemically fixed. The forms of the sculptures were made based on a set of geometric principles but the colors are the result of a number of factors: the quality and source of light, the recipe of the film emulsion, the freshness of the film - all factors outside of Gates’ control. The resulting body of work is a series of tests, chasing but never able to achieve predictable results.

Shaina Gates works in experimental photography, sculpture, and material studies combining geometric systems with the alchemical nature of photosensitive materials to produce 2- and 3-dimensional photograms on film and paper. Gates earned an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016, an MAT in Art Education in 2008, and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2005. Her work has been included in the 2023 Center for Maine Contemporary Art’s Biennial, the 2022 New England Triennial, presented by the deCordova Museum and Fruitlands Museum, and recently a show at 3SArtspace in Portsmouth, NH, entitled TESTSET. She is the 2023 recipient of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation’s Piscataqua Region Artist Advancement Grant. Shaina Gates lives and works in Kittery, Maine, teaches at the University of New Hampshire, and is a studio advisor in the MFA program at the Maine College of Art.

shainagates.com
shainagates@gmail.com
IG: @shainagates