Faculty John Opera at Andrew Rafacz Gallery

Photography Faculty Member, John Opera, new works in Gallery One at Andrew Rafacz Gallery. September 21 - October 27, 2012


ANDREW RAFACZ is pleased to announce People, Places, and Things, new works by John Opera in Gallery One.


Chicago, IL, September 21, 2012– ANDREW RAFACZ begins the fall 2012 season with People, Places, and Things, new works by John Opera.  This is the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. It continues through Saturday, October 27, 2012.  Please join us for a reception for the artist Friday, September 21, 6-8pm.


John Opera has long been interested in the camera’s relationship to the empirical world, especially the natural world, in which it exists.  For the artist, the act of experiencing and the act of observing are simultaneous and, in the process of recording them, they are also constantly acting upon each other.   The act of being in the world with a tool or process for recording is a privileged ontological position, but it is also not without its own inherent dilemmas.  With his new body of work, Opera continues to move from a reliance on the photograph as pure image to an examination of the threshold between image and surface and its metaphorical equivalence to the relationship between observation and imagining.


The artist has also spent much of his career examining the history of photography, especially the earliest experiments that have led to the image making of today.  Previously, he investigated the anthoype, an image made directly in sunlight, which is linked to the earliest experiments with the photographic process.  Similar to the process of creating an anthotype, the cyanotype arrives at an image through liquid chemical processes that were discontinued early on in photography’s history, except to be repurposed in the 20th century for architectural blueprints and the language of schematics.  The results, for Opera, are works that are certainly photographic, but possess an unusual visual quality that directly connects to their inherent chemical properties.  The final images are all rendered in the deep blue that is immediately recognizable in blueprints.  They are also produced on linen-stretched canvases, further separating them from the traditional experience of a photograph.


More Information here.