RIVE: A PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION

Jon Verney a photographer whose work engages in manipulated found imagery, an interplay between the images of forgotten amateur photographers and the powerful sensation of abstract colors and fractal patterns and reticulation of the original.

His work is a reiteration of the dadaist practice of found objects and their subsequent metamorphoses after entering his possession. Using the contemporary material that is a Polaroid and subjecting them to methods of tangible and controllable manipulation of the photographic emulsion, Verney draws out of them the untapped potential that lay dormant.

He sources his materials, the Polaroids, from flea markets, shops, or bought in bulk online. Blowing these small personal images up to a large scale reinvents the originals into something unintended at their initial creation, giving a commentary on personal versus public.

The disassociation with the subjects and the original photographers’, whose work allows Verney the ability to create his work, mirrors that of Jacqui Kenny or Doug Rickard and their respective use of Google Street View, a global resource allowing those two photographers to create artwork from the comfort of their own homes using the resources of our modern society.

The subject of this body of work, Rive, engages in the theme of a schism, a fault line, a separation of two worlds that butt up against one another, like the waves of the ocean lapping against the shore. The banal common-place nature of these amateur photographs is at the same time both obscured behind, and obscuring the organic blooms of his manipulations, giving the sensation of a reciprocity between reality and surreality.

Join us for the Opening Reception!

Thursday, February 7, 2019 from 6:00-8:00pm

Make sure to also stop by the Artist Talk!

Thursday, April 18, 2019 from 6:00-7:00pm

Jon Verney is a visual artist whose practice interweaves the materiality of painting, photography, and film. After earning a BFA with Distinction in Painting from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2010, he relocated to Florence, Italy, where he attended SACI’s Post-Baccalaureate studio program. He was afterwards awarded a SACI Photo/Media Teaching Assistantship and remained at the school for two more years as a TA and darkroom technician. Upon returning to the United States, he received his MFA from the Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan in 2016. Verney has exhibited his work nationally and internationally and has attended artist residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Studios at MASS MoCA, Penland School of Craft, and the Independent Imaging Retreat in Ontario, Canada. His studio practice is based in North Adams, Massachusetts.