Opening Friday, June 4: 2008 McKnight Artist Fellowships for Photographers
OPENING THIS FRIDAY AT 7PM!
Franklin Art Works will premiere major new bodies by the four 2008 McKnight Fellows - Priscilla Briggs, Osama Esid, David Goldes and Justin Newhall. The exhibition opens Friday, June 4, 2010, with a reception for the artists from 7 to 9pm. The show remains on view through Saturday, July 31.
Priscilla Briggs will premiere a selection of photographs from her Fortune series, examining the retail landscape of China, as the country straddles the gap between communism and capitalism. Her works depict advertisements whose massive scale is rivaled only by the malls in which they are placed. Briggs adeptly explores contrasts between east and west, old and new - revealing the shifting identity and aspirations of a country and its people.
Briggs received a BA from Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh) and a MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore). Her works have been included in exhibitions at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, Nexus/foundation for today’s art, and the Minnesota Center for Photography and the Maryland Federation for the Arts.
Osama Esid will premier a series of sepia-toned photographs that examine the architectural dichotomy of present day Cairo,where freeways and skyscrapers rise next to ancient mosques and ruins - and where giant construction projects hide crumbling tracts of houses. In his images, Cairo remains in constant flux between the past and the present.
Esid studied at the Technical Institute of Damascus, Syria and has exhibited internationally at venues including the Nietzsche Gallery (Madrid), the Hong Kong Art Fair, Shanghai Art Fair, Art Dubai, Art Abu Dhabi and IFP Minnesota Center for Media Arts, among other venues.
David Goldes will premiere a selection of black-and-white photographs that capture imaginatively arranged experiments involving salt, balloons, smoke and air. By looking very carefully at the properties of such common materials and by orchestrating events to display their behavior, Goldes’s photographs reveal our various and nuanced relationships to the physical world.
Goldes received a BA from SUNY at Buffalo, a MA from Harvard University and a MFA from the Visual Studies Workshope (Rochester, New York). He has exhibited extensively, with solo exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, Musée Nicephore Niepce (Chalon-sur-Saone, France), Fotofest (Houston), George Eastman House (Rochester, New York) and Yossi Milo Gallery.
Justin Newhall will premiere a selection of photographs from his Northern Studies series, taken in and around Churchill, Manitoba. Using Glenn Gould’s pioneering 1967 radio documentary, The Idea of North, as a departure point and guide, Newhall traveled to the western shore of Hudson Bay for four years, capturing images of solitude and isolation, including white outs, slow growth trees, survivalist science stations, and eco tourists in search of polar bears sightings - among other signs of daily life from this far flung corner of Canada.
Newhall received a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design and a MFA from the University of Minnesota. His work has been featured in exhibitions internationally at venues including the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), Galerie Lichtblick (Cologne), Minnesota Center for Photography and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
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The McKnight Artist Fellowship for Photographers program is administered by mnartists.org, a project of the McKnight Foundation and Walker Art Center.
The exhibition is made possible by a grant from the McKnight Foundation.
