In "Domestic Views," Frederic Weber uses the tropes of the still life to explore the joys and terrors of childhood and growing up. Working with paper images, he alternatively tears, cuts, folds and crumples them before he arranges and photographs the resulting portraits on a tabletop.
Weber writes, “Paper, an ephemeral material by nature, has always appealed to me as a tool in portraying the passage of time.” Photographing with color negative film, he highlights the importance of light, chemistry and film emulsion, and the traditions and history of photography to his practice. The resulting pigment prints are exquisitely color-rich, playful, yet with an unerring underlying tension between the creative expressions of childhood, all the while embracing conceptually based work that forces a contemporary understanding. Referencing the world of the child, not unlike Lewis Carroll’s embrace of the imagined emotional landscape of childhood, the resulting work is a collision of color, medium, childhood, the realities of relationships, marriage and family, with an unsettling and occasionally terrifying view of contemporary life.
Weber earned a BFA in Film and Television from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, an MA in Education/Administration from City College in New York City and another MA in Education from Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. Weber’s works are represented in several museum collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester, N. Y.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colo.; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va.; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Ala.; the Gernsheim Collection, University of Texas, Austin, Texas; Forbes Collection, New York; the Dow Jones Collection, New York; Essence Collection, New York; and the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, as well as many private collections such as Manfried Heiting, Bill Hunt and Fred Bidwell. His work has been widely exhibited including "The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W.M. Hunt Collection," the George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography, Rochester, N.Y.; the Hooks-Epstein Gallery, Houston, Texas; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York City; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas. Weber’s photographs have been reproduced in several publications including Art + Auction, Aperture, Flash Art, The New Yorker, The New York Times and more recently, The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W.M. Hunt Collection (Aperture). Weber is an adjunct faculty member at the Rockland Community College in Suffern, N.Y., and is represented by Klompching Gallery in New York City. Weber resides and works in Nyack, N.Y.
Reception: March 27, 4 p.m.
Above: "Paper and Glass," 30" x 40", Framed.
Terra Hall
211 S Broad Street, 14th floor
Philadelphia, PA 19107
United States
http://www.uarts.edu/events/2014/03/domestic-views-frederic-weber