Passing Time in the Desert exhibition open
It is our pleasure to announce the opening of a new show!
Megan Berner
reception 4 December 2 - 4pm
The exhibition consists of photographs, cyanotypes, cyanotype transfers, and a video made in the desert,
running from 15 Nov - 15 Jan 2022
MEGAN BERNER
Bio
Megan Berner is a visual artist living and working in Reno, Nevada. She graduated with her MFA in Intermedia from the University of Iowa with a minor in drawing. Megan works with digital and experimental techniques such as instant film, digital transfers, and cyanotypes. Her work is greatly influenced by the landscape of her native Nevada home as well as the vast prairies of the Midwest, being a twin, mapping and exploration, and countless hours of daydreaming. She creates site-specific installations that incorporate video and sound and constructs performative scenes that ultimately exist as photographs. Other forms her artwork takes include artist's books, collaborative interactions, textile projects, and narrative videos.
Megan's work has been shown nationally and internationally and is part of multiple collections including the Center for Art and Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art, University of Arizona Art Museum, the University of Iowa Special Collections, and Southern Graphics Council International Archive.
Artist statement
Coming from a desert home, I have always been drawn to more desolate, inhospitable, and subtle landscapes—places that seem to only show themselves to those who spend time in them and seek out what they have to offer. For me, they invite introspection and reflection on the complexity of human-place relationships and our own internal-external manifestations of these relationships. I am particularly interested in mirages and other light phenomena as visual representations of the liminal spaces of these relationships.
In my work, I explore the ways we interact with our environment— how we form relationships with it and how those connections influence our interpretation of the world around us—what marks we leave behind, the experiences—intangible and manifest, and the action of moving through or being in a place. All of us have different places that we can claim to be our own because of our unique experiences there. The idea of place becomes much more internalized and individual. Memories and experiences, those things we carry with us, are projected onto the present landscape, our own personal maps and reference points.
I am interested in liminal spaces, internal and external—spaces that are transitional and in-between, not quite here or there. Mirages and other light phenomena, states of meditation, suspended moments, and dream states all occupy this kind of territory. I manipulate the surface of the photograph through multiple exposures and layering to invite the viewer into a more personal and psychological experience of the space.
Working with a combination of digital and traditional processes, I create layered landscapes that reflect imagined spaces. I began experimenting with the cyanotype process in 2014. As a trained photographer, I am drawn to the simplicity and directness of creating an image using sunlight. Particularly because light and the experience of it are so integral to my understanding of my desert home.
Whether through vistas of sunrises, stacked in grids to show passing time or manipulated digital transfers and layered cyanotypes, I am interested in creating spaces for daydreaming, exploration, and discovery to occur. The resulting images become a landscape of the mind.
Find more images and ongoing updates about Passing Time in the Desert on the
Exhibition page of our website
ARTIST NEWS
EUNKANG KOH
Koh is about to head off to a printmaking residency at InCahoots for 2 weeks in Petaluma, .....but this is a gathering of her wall of eyes work in progress so far....
JEAN BRENNAN
While continuing to teach at Pratt University, NY, Jean has exciting news that we are not allowed to divulge yet....meanwhile she has been creating exquisite imagery and prose like this....
JULIA SCHWADRON MARIANELLI
Julia has cooked up some new beauties while on her Interlude Residency in NY
She writes: "In my most recent body of work, “Trembling Grass / Vibrating Grass,” I use text phrases that function as titles to begin many of the paintings. These text fragments refer to both the natural environment and the human psyche. One painting, “Suppression Tactics” was conceived as I considered the wildfire conditions in the west alongside the systemic ways that information is kept from the people who need it most. The text matrix as the first layer is meant as a place holder for thought as well as a visual structure to organize the painting itself. In other paintings in the series, I imagined the landscape communicating directly through leaving its own organic mark versus translating it into text myself. In works such as “Bank Breach” and “Weed Impunity” I am painting on top of fabric that has been bundled dyed in advance with local plants, literally embedding the plants themselves into the cotton. I imagine the finished painting as a kind of conversation with the landscape."
JENNIFER GARZA-CUEN
Exciting news! Jennifer is currently in Paris, at Paris Photo signing her collaborative monograph book she produced with photographer//artist Odette England published by Radius Books.
Past Paper//Present Marks is collaborative work between the two artists "responding to Rauschenburg," during their residency, on Robert Rauschenburg's former property on Captiva Island, Florida, where he lived and worked for nearly 4 decades. Using his expired photographic paper both artists experimented in unusual ways, including exposing paper to the sun in a variety of ways and even floating the paper in the pool, producing remarkable images.
GIAMPIERO ASSUMMA
Back into the streets of Moscow, Giampiero is photographing fragments of life that only he notices... fleeting moments captured on his ever present Leica.
GALEN BROWN
Continuing with his exploration of waves, Galen has created some new wonderful 5" x 7" drawings...
MIYA HANNAN
It is that time of year...get ready for the Skull Show!
Curated by Chris Bauder, an artist from Las Vegas, held at the Sheppard Gallery at the University of Reno, Nevada. Miya has a new soot drawing with sculpture elements in this latest show.
KELLY POPOFF
Continuing her thoughtful series Memoirs, Kelly is making her way through to a projected 50 paintings on the year of her 50th birthday.... delicious little paintings in a wonderful color range like the Zorn palette.
FRANCES MELHOP
Has been installing/uninstalling/installing shows and has started in on more monotype blind contour works...first layers of a work in progress here...
FROM THE FLATFILES
Kelly Popoff painting
contact frances@melhopgallery.com to acquire
and finally
Happy Thanksgiving, have a wonderful week
from the artists at Melhop Gallery º7077
Follow us on Instagram or Facebook as the new gallery progresses and see what the 13 artists have been up to.
The gallery will continue to operate by appointment, with some open hours on Saturdays (keep an eye on instagram or Facebook for the open days). We are very happy to open for individual or group visits.
Please let us know if you would like to schedule a gallery visit on a weekday or a weekend.
Email: frances@melhopgallery.com
www.melhopgallery.com
210 Elks Point Rd, Zephyr Cove, Lake Tahoe, Nevada 89448