NYAB Event - John Opera “A Priori”

John Opera “A Priori”

Longhouse Projects

This event has ended.

Longhouse Projects presents a priori, by John Opera. This is his first solo exhibition with the gallery.

John Opera’s recent introduction of the cyanotype into his repertoire of photographic approaches symbolically reflects his gradual evolution from empirical research to a more clinical, methodical study. His trajectory began with carefully honed and cropped landscape photographs, moving to abstract anthotypes—a photosensitive process of bleaching out images created from a fruit or vegetable based emulsion. His latest body of work centers around a focused meditation on seemingly everyday objects translated in a very specific Prussian Blue on a residue-washed linen surface. The process of the cyanotype is a now almost obsolete technique that is not too far removed from the anthotype, using liquid chemicals and ultraviolet rays to develop the images. It was originally conceived to reproduce notes and diagrams, and later blueprints. Opera’s photographic paintings curiously address this explicit objective by making notes out of rock collections and label-free bottles and diagrams out of ropes, chains, and posed hands.

There is a linearity that is often avoided within today’s art trends, given the progressive shift toward interdisciplinary activities and confluence of media, but part of the power in Opera’s work comes from his voracious consumption of his own personal previous bodies of works and the accumulated integration directed back into new projects. a priori literally means “from the earlier” and Opera willfully chooses to pull from the earlier and push forward. His landscape photography came from his interest in better understanding the world around him, the anthotypes came from an interest in scrutinizing and creating directly from the same locations (the fruits and vegetables used to create the photographic emulsions are sourced from the same places), and the cyanotypes come from an interest to further understand his own investigation into the history and process of photography. From one project to the next, one can trace the complicated contrapositions inherent in each of the works—particularly the heightening of contrasts between formal techniques and conceptual concerns specifically tied to photography and painting, as his work has always been mutually comprised of these two mediums. The cyanotype represents for the artist a refreshing return to an earlier mode in order to look at things anew.

[Image: JOHN OPERA “Silicates III” (2013) Cyanotype on stretched linen, 48 x 36 in / 121.92 x 91.44 cm]

Media

• Painting
• Prints

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