shift Collaborative Studio
Shift Announces Photography Exhibition
by Bailey Russel
Possession
February 4 –
27, 2010
First Thursday Opening Reception: February 4th 5-8pm
Shift
Hours: Friday & Saturday 12-5 Or by Appointment: info@shiftstudio.org
"Possession" began as a response to the amazing beauty
of Acadia National Park in Maine, as a way to approach the surroundings. Taking the smallest objects, flower
petals, and then decaying, scanning, and printing them at immense sizes dwarfed
their real identity. The project began as a process, a series of actions
taken to adjust to the environment and change its scale to suit me more
comfortably.
The peculiar inspiration was the actions of the Judge from Cormac
McCarthy's novel "Blood Meridian". While traveling through the
Southwest this hairless stand-in for the Devil routinely collects ancient
artifacts, sketches them and destroys them saying his goal is to expunge them
from the memory of mankind and posses them. The objects collected here
are natural and moving forward on their own way out of our memory. The
scans then are a different way to posses them, to record and glorify their
place in time.
Bailey began studying photography as
an undergraduate at Princeton before continuing for a Masters at NYU. After
spending six years working and showing in New York City he recently relocated
to Seattle has begun exploring the possibilities of the Pacific Northwest.
In New York, Bailey's work has been featured in shows at the
International Center for Photography, Gallery Satori, Sarah Bowen Gallery, and
the Rosenberg Gallery among other places and his most recent solo show was at
Gallery Cortona in Clinton, Iowa. In addition to Shift, Bailey currently
has a solo show at The Monarch Gallery in Seattle.
For more information about the artist, please visit www.baileyrussel.com
