Where the Future Can Meet
Marcelo Fontana + Katherine Spinella
August 6 - August 28, 2022
Exhibition Reception
Saturday, August 6 5-8 pmOpen Hours
Sat-Sun 12-5pm*drop in or by appointment
Email Info@carnationcontemporary.com
to schedule a visit
*Masks required inside the gallery
Exhibition Statement
With the expansion of digital production in the last 30 years, contemporary images have undergone a metamorphosis where reality plays an even smaller role in artistic development yet images have become more fluid and potent. Once a mirror, a vehicle for expression, or a simple representation of nature, the image no longer relates to reality, rather referring to optics, narrative, marketing, and surveillance.This linear development of the post-image happened through the porosity of the new media, creating a fluid environment to the detriment of exclusive specificities of the past. So far, the stories created are of advances and setbacks, where the future can meet, cross or rejoin the past. This non-linear way of creating narratives and reality is what Marcelo Fontana and Katherine Spinella seek to understand in Where the Future Can Meet.
Observed through the proliferation of shared 'photo dumps' as contemporary diaries or still-life paintings of the present, images become unspecific personal artifacts. What would the story on the card in the museum read? The more ordinary or unflattering personal present becomes more "real." In this, we engage with hypervisibility as an absurdity for coping with the present. Like a garden walk or watching a fire burn, we crave instances that are non-decisive moments outside spectacle and production.
This collaborative installation by Marcelo Fontana and Katherine Spinella utilizes light, fabric, text, moving, and still image to create a space for reflection on topics of transparency, opacity, grief, and longing centered around post-photographic sentiments.
Bios
Marcelo Fontana is an artist and organizer from São Paulo, Brazil, based in Portland. With BFA in Photography (Senac-Brazil), Fontana is one of the founders of Wave Contemporary, a member of Carnation Contemporary, and was part of the artist incubator group Prequel and Atelier Fidalga. He has made shows in Brazil, Japan, Korea, and the USA and was part of WeWork Residency and The Ford Family Foundation in collaboration with PNCA Leland Iron Works residency.Katherine Spinella is a collage-based artist interested in process and perception. She is a co-founder of Carnation Contemporary and a co-founding director of Thunderstruck Collective and Well Well Projects. Recently she has exhibited in A Provocation at After/Time Collective in Portland, SEEDED at Test Site Projects in Las Vegas, What’s Different at SOIL in Seattle, and Future Landscapes at Borders International Art Fair in Venice, Italy. Her work has been supported by the Ford Family Foundation, Oregon Arts Commission, The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, Portland State University, Vermont Studio Center, Kala Art Institute, and Women's Studio Workshop. Spinella earned her MFA from the University of Oregon in 2013 and is currently based in Portland, OR.
