Jeanette May and Kimberly Witham “Vanitas”

Klompching Gallery

This event has ended.

The KLOMPCHING GALLERY presents an exhibition of still life photographs, by Jeanette May and Kimberly Witham. Both artists have created artworks inspired by the Dutch Vanitas. The exhibition brings together two very different visions, nonetheless connected by their respective historical reference to the Dutch Golden Age of still life.

The Tech Vanitas series, by Jeanette May, embraces luxury, honors design, and acknowledges the fleeting nature of earthly pleasures. These contemporary vanitas utilize digital photography to capture precarious arrangements of domestic technological ephemera: a coffee percolator and film camera teeter atop a shiny boombox that spews magnetic tape across the keys of an Underwood typewriter. May’s images of anachronistic technologies confront still life’s traditional tension, between temptation and rejection of worldly goods.

Kimberly Witham presents lush photographs, incorporating roadkill with flora from her garden, creating meditative studies of fragility, beauty, ripeness and decay. The Of Ripeness and Rot and Other Works, are a celebration of beauty and a reminder of death. The modest scale of the photographs maintain the intimate and personal element of the narrative, while also projecting a universal story based on well understood symbols.

Both artists successfully contemporize the well-populated treatment of the vanitas, bringing something new and unique to the genre. The exhibition of 16 color photographs is on view May 3–June 30, and opens with an Artist Reception on Thursday, May 4, 6:00–8:00pm.

Jeanette May (b. 1963) was awarded an MFA in Photography from CalArts and a BFA in Painting from the University of Illinois. The artist has received a number of awards and grants, including from the NEA and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts among others. May lives and works in Brooklyn.

Kimberly Witham (b. 1970) was awarded a BA from Duke University and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts. Her artworks have been exhibited widely since 2001, and placed into numerous private collections in the US. Awards and accolades include the Antonio Cirino Artist Fellowship, an honorable mention for the Clarence John Laughlin Award and being named a Finalist for PhotoLucida’s Critical Mass. Witham lives and works in New Jersey.