Filter Photo at Night: Clarissa Bonet
Filter Photo is pleased to present Filter Photo at Night, a series of photography projections featuring the work of Chicago-based artist, Clarissa Bonet. Projected in the windows of the former Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery, this installation presents Bonet's series City Space.
City Space is an investigation of the human experience of the built environment within the contemporary city center. Drawing inspiration from a mix of lived experience, observation, and research, the images in this series contemplate pedestrianism, anonymity, urban planning, surveillance, and the divide between public and private space. Working within the framework of street photography and the constructed image, Bonet uses city streets as a dynamic backdrop for the subtle, often overlooked dramas of daily life that play out in a city’s planned and built urban spaces. The artist's fascination with photography's intrinsic connection to light plays a central role in her creative process. She harnesses the stark brilliance of sunlight not just to illuminate, but to transform urban landscapes into a space for psychological investigation. The photographs in City Space consider our lived experience of the constructed landscape that we inhabit, our relationship to it, and the people who surround us.
About the Artist
Clarissa Bonet is an artist based in Chicago whose work explores issues of the built environment in both a physical and psychological context. She holds an MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago and a BS in Photography from the University of Central Florida. Bonet’s work has been exhibited at the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, Aperture Foundation, Magenta Foundation, and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, among others.
Her work has been published in The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, CNN Photo, Chicago Magazine, Harpers Bizarre, Juxtapoz, and The Eye of Photography, among many other national and international publications. Bonet’s photographs are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Southeast Museum of Photography, Haggerty Museum of Art, University Club Chicago, and the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection.
Most recently, she received an Individual Artist Grant and Fellowship Finalist award from the Illinois Arts Council. Her work also won inclusion in “The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today'' at The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
On View: January 1st – 21st, 2024
Location: 1 W Grand Ave, Chicago, IL
Produced for Filter Photo by David M. Wong and Jeff Phillips; Projection Design and Implementation by Jeff Phillips and Melissa Simms.