Filter Photo at Night: Festival Edition
featuring 2023 Filter Photo Festival Exhibiting Artists
Filter Photo is pleased to present Filter Photo at Night: Festival Edition, a series of photography projections, featuring 2023 Filter Photo Festival exhibiting artists. Projected in the windows of the former Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery, this installation brings the work currently on view at Filter Space off the gallery walls and into one of the busiest intersections in downtown Chicago.
Rebecca Drolen's series, Unstable Entity, uses photographs and architectural constructs to explore balancing and tipping points within culturally unstable expectations of female strength, resilience, and bodily performance. The work compares physical bodily forms to ad-hoc assemblages that are tenuously balanced using common building materials. Within this juxtaposition is a meditation on the body as an architectural construct and the unsettled standards of what it means to be a “strong woman.” The collage of forms speculates on the relationship of female strength to intimidation, sexuality, and desire and the individual stamina required to pursue both mental and physical wellness. Female body builders enter the work as a form of archetype or idealized body representing a maximized performance of strength and physicality. The artist’s performances pursue stamina, wavering balance, and the labor associated with managing the collision of roles between being the subject and operator of the photograph. The work is a montage of layered priorities alongside feverish persistence to perform to meet the standards of contemporary femininity, despite its distinct illogics.
Image Credits: Bo Brout (left) and Judson Womack (below)
we like small things v.6, juried by Anna Goldwater Alexander of WIRED, is our sixth annual small works exhibition and features the work of 42 artists from across the US. Anna had this to say of the exhibition: "There were so many incredibly beautiful and meaningful entries—I sat with them and just stared for hours. I found it most fascinating that many entries were derived from old-school and analog methods, which seemed true fitting to this edition of we like small things. As a creator who has worked with analog methods, I know how much goes into one piece, let alone a series. This is what makes this theme so special, this is what makes each entry unique. Thank you for trusting me with your art and for opening my heart to such intimate works. I wish I could have given every submission a winning star, because they were all important to me."
Produced for Filter Photo by David M. Wong and Jeff Phillips; Projection Design and Implementation by Jeff Phillips and Melissa Simms.
On View: September 15th – October 1st, 2023
Hours: 7 PM – 12 PM each evening
Location: 1 W Grand Ave, Chicago, IL
