Spotted at First Light
“Our human tragedy is that we are unable to comprehend our experience, it slips through our fingers, we can’t hold on to it, and the more time passes, the harder it gets…My father said that the natural world gave us explanations to compensate for the meanings we could not grasp. The slant of the cold sunlight on a winter pine, the music of water, an oar cutting the lake and the flight of birds, the mountains’ nobility, the silence of the silence. We are given life but must accept that it is unattainable and rejoice in what can be held in the eye, the memory, the mind.” -Salman Rushdie
MIAMI, FL—Mindy Solomon Gallery is pleased to present ‘Spotted at First Light,’ a new installation of photography and video by Jeremy Chandler—continuing a body of fictional narrative, the work explores masculine identity and relationship to place. The exhibition will be on view February 6th through March 19th, 2016 at Mindy Solomon Gallery’s location in Little River, 8397 NE 2nd Avenue, Miami. An Opening Reception with the artist will take place Saturday, February 6th, from 7-9pm at the gallery.
Spotted At First-Light, new work by Jeremy Chandler, alludes to themes of passive searching and laying-in-wait. Repurposing methods utilized by hunting and military culture, Chandler stages scenes converting otherwise weaponized techniques into benign aesthetic devices. Male figures are pictured embedded in a variety of terrain, engaged in moments of still introspection, seemingly in cryptic dialogue with one another and the landscape. As with all of Chandler’s work, the landscape becomes a character within his narratives and is used as both stage and medium for communication. Through a returning visual vocabulary and distinctive iconography, relationships become apparent—prompting the viewer to question the nature of the characters’ activities, as well as their connections to one another and the land.
About Jeremy Chandler
Jeremy Chandler is a photographic artist who creates through a variety of conceptual and formal approaches, such as straight photography, tableaus, and documentary and narrative film projects. His work subverts ritualized expressions of masculinity to reveal a more nuanced idea of maleness, while questioning how culture and myth can often intertwine to create altered perceptions of space and place.
In addition to being the 2008 Photographer Laureate for the city of Tampa, Florida, he has exhibited at notable venues, including: Hagedorn Foundation Gallery in Atlanta, GA; Balzer Art Projects in Basel, Switzerland; and Giampietro Gallery in New Haven, CT. He received his BFA from the University of Florida in Creative Photography and MFA from the University of South Florida. He is currently an Assistant Professor teaching photography at Southern Connecticut State University.
