LA NOW: Bridget Batch, Heyward Hart, Colin Patrick Smith, Ilona Szwarc
Photo Independent
Raleigh Studios Hollywood
5300 Melrose Avenue
Hollywood, CA 90038
April 29 - May 1, 2016
Curated by Hemera Collective + Ann Harezlak
Bridget Batch Heyward Hart Colin Patrick Smith Illona Szwarc
Celebrating the rise of dynamic contemporary photographic practices in the greater Los Angeles area, Ann Harezlak and Hemera Collective showcase selected works and the distinctive voices of notable artists to watch.
Bridget Batch – Located at sites of geologic and social transformation, the photographs of the Glow Performance series are records of performances in which Batch traces unseen boundaries with a light for up to an hour, all the while dancing or walking, seemingly endlessly redoing her steps. The boundaries she draws during her performance represent the lines between the human-made and the natural-made, investigating the idea of the Anthropocene or the era of humans changing the planet on a truly global scale. These mass activities by humans have completely altered the face of the planet and nature from what it was before humanity.
In the Owens Lake images from the series, Batch photographs within the nearly-dry lakebed of what was, until 100 years ago, a thriving lake and forest ecosystem perched in the arid rain shadow of the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains. Now, damp and saline and coated with a skim of 5% of its previous acreage of water, the rest is siphoned off to quench the thirst of Angelenos. The photograph exists as an expanse of time, of movement and as evidence of a presence that would otherwise be invisible. Documenting but also addressing issues of place, the body and human impact upon the earth.
Bridget received her MFA in Photography from CalArts and BFA in Photography, magna cum laude, at University of Houston. She has exhibited internationally with solo exhibitions including: Halcyon in New York; Galleria Traghetto in Venice, Italy; Gallery D301, Valencia, CA. Group exhibitions including: Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore; Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA; 356 Mission, Los Angeles, CA; The Re-Institute, New York. Published in Hyperallergic, Ventana Monthly and ArtSlant, Batch has been awarded two merit Scholarships at CalArts and Tropical Lab in Singapore. She was awarded residencies in Canada (Klondike Institute of Arts & Culture), Arizona (Grand Canyon South Rim Program), Iceland (Herhúsið), New York (Salem Art Works), Italy (FABRICA). Batch lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
Heyward Hart graduated with his MFA in Photography from Yale University (2011) and was granted the Richard Benson Prize as well as the Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship. He has shown at PØST, CA; 950 Hart Gallery, NY; Aviary Gallery, MA; Current Space, MD and The Basement Gallery, TN. Solo exhibitions include: Graham Student Union, NC; Public Library of Brookline, MA and Hanes Art Center, NC. Hart lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
His work, Charis Variations, is part of an ongoing investigation into the relationship between image, history, language, and form. For Charis Variations he photographed three different subjects which happened to share the same name: a negative depicting Weston’s famous muse, Weston’s grandson’s cat, and my hairdresser. The formal approach varies in each image while the subject, nominally speaking, remains the same.
Colin Patrick Smith deconstructs formal sensitivities, regarding elemental subjects as object within latent references and glancing realizations. Smith (MFA Photography from Yale University, BFA Columbia College Chicago) was presented with the Ward Cheney Memorial Award for outstanding achievement in composition while at Yale University (2009). Published in Searching for the Light and SOMA, Smith’s work has been featured in exhibitions across the United States including: Capricious Gallery in Brooklyn, NY; Gallery 339 in Philadelphia, PA and the Eighth Veil in Los Angeles, CA. He has also shown in exhibitions Arrive and Likewise Depart (2014), The Nature of Painting and Photography (2015), and The Promise of Something and Nothing (2015) at Sonce Alexander Gallery, Los Angeles. Smith lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Ilona Szwarc – “This process of becoming can appear obscure and haunting, the gestures violent and aggressive, a primitive act of markmaking. Through my experiments, I have found that becoming is a process of elimination, a construction that moves progressively towards a void, an erasure of meaning. At first, I would observe myself in the eyes of the double, an act of mimicry that mirrored myself back to me, all the intricate details of how I embody and occupy myself. Now, I imagine myself in a space of emptiness.” — Ilona Szwarc
Szwarc received an MFA in Photography from Yale University in New Haven, Conn. and a BFA from School of Visual Arts in New York City. She has had solo exhibitions at Foley Gallery in New York City, Claude Samuel in Paris, France, Amerika Haus in Munich, Germany, and Maison de la Photographie in Lille, France. Her work has been shown in group shows internationally – in London, Bilbao, Warsaw, Lodz, Chicago, and most recently at Regen Projects in Los Angeles and Danziger Gallery in New York. Szwarc has been awarded Richard Benson Prize for Excellence in Photography (2015), Arnold Newman Prize for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture (2014), World Press Photo (2013). In 2014, she received Alice Kimball Traveling Fellowship from Yale University. Szwarc’s photographs have been featured in numerous publications worldwide including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, TIME, The UK Sunday Times Magazine, The Telegraph Magazine. Szwarc lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
