I was interviewed recently by Lauren Szumita, Curatorial Assistant of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at Worcester Art Museum as part of the Central Massachusetts Artist Initiative. An excerpt of the conversation:

LS: We are excited to feature works from your series This is (Still) the Golden Age at WAM. Can you explain more about the process of creating this series?

MG: I wanted to create an image where the light was both the subject and the object. I began by thinking about the crossover between broadcast media and photography. On a primary level, photographs record the absence or presence of light. As contact prints (or photograms), these are a direct index of an object, but they also have the artist’s desire to have touched, which is an artistic gesture. What one sees is the recent absence of the object touching the light-sensitive surface–its residual shadow. The television image, the electronic image, its transmission exist in a continuum within the larger electromagnetic spectrum of which visible light is a small fraction.

Read more of the interview at Worcester Art Museums Updates.

Works from This is (Still) the Golden Age will be on display in Sidney and Rosalie Rose Gallery at the Worcester Art Museum through March 29, 2020.

From the curator:

"Matthew Gamber’s photographic practice explores the way meaning is constructed through photography, by isolating and confronting various elements of photography, such as color or light. Gamber created the works in his series This is (Still) the Golden Age by pressing light-sensitive photographic paper against a cathode-ray tube television as it was powering down. In doing so, Gamber captured a residual image as the heat and light of the television subsided.”

The Central Massachusetts Artist Initiative (CMAI) expands the Worcester Art Museum's ongoing commitment to the vibrant art community throughout the region. Launched in December 2017, CMAI showcases the extraordinary and multi-faceted talents of artists who live or work in the greater Worcester region with a solo installation in the Sidney and Rosalie Rose Gallery. Each year two artists, invited by one of the Museum's curators, will display a small grouping of works alongside significant contemporary artists, including Willie Cole, Doris Salcedo and Alice Neel.

Worcester Art Museum
55 Salisbury St.
Worcester, MA 01609

From the press release:

“This year, we celebrate our 30th graduating class from the low-residency MFA in Visual Arts program at Lesley Art and Design. In celebration, we are proud to present the exhibition, Kith + Kin: Friends and Mentors of Lesley MFA, an exhibition that highlights the effort and contribution of mentors and visiting artists over the years. Many of the artists in the show have served as studio mentors to our MFA students across the country. They have all guided student practice over many semesters through conversation and critique. Other featured artists have served as visiting speakers or visiting faculty in our residencies on campus, adding to the larger discourse which surrounds the MFA community.”

Kith + Kin: Friends and Mentors of Lesley MFA in Visual Arts
Lunder Arts Center
Roberts and Raizes Galleries
1801 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02140

Yael Eban and I have collaborated on a piece that is featured in Transmitter’s benefit exhibition, Art on Go. From the site:

“Transmitter is pleased to present Art to Go: A Benefit for Make the Road New York. In these tumultuous times, we have acknowledged the potential in harboring community efforts for the common good. As a result, we've chosen to take action by inviting dozens of artists we have exhibited and friends of the gallery to create unique works on or with our iconic tote bag. Each piece will be for sale for $150 with a few limited edition runs available for less, and a portion of all sales will be donated to the immigrant support group Make the Road New York. A representative of Make the Road NY will be present during the opening reception, able to provide further information on the organization’s mission.”

November 30–December 16, 2018
Opening Reception, Friday, November 30, 6–9pm
Preview: Thursday, November 29, 6–8pm

Transmitter
1329 Willoughby Avenue, 2A,
Brooklyn, NY 11237

Saturday and Sunday
1pm-6pm or by appointment

I am a contributor to a new title from One Day Projects, a collaborative publishing project from Eliot Dudik and Jared Ragland.

From the press release:

“On August 21, 2017, the total solar eclipse provided a rare opportunity for people across the United States to experience a collective encounter. Inspired by both the natural wonder and symbolic possibilities of this unique occurrence, photographers from inside and outside the path of totality were invited to document and share their experiences. The resulting book, And light followed the flight of sound, features 85 images by 52 emergent and established photographic artists.

Edited, designed and produced by Eliot Dudik and Jared Ragland and presented as a 30-foot-long, hand-bound accordion with an enclosed saddle-stitched zine and essay by art historian Catherine Wilkins, Ph.D., University of South Florida, the limited edition of 150 copies is printed on digital offset, covered in a foil-stamped cloth, and comes housed in a clear Mylar sleeve, also foil stamped. As the book is removed from its sleeve, the foil stamps mimic the passage of the moon in front of the sun.”

One Day Projects

And light followed the flight of sound
8 x 6 x 1 in. x 27 ft.
Edition of 150

I will be exhibiting work from an in-progress project, Lost Color of God and Man, in a group exhibition with CENTER as part of Currents New Media Festival
. From the site:

“Color Cue: Explorations in Perception is a juried projection curated by Angie Rizzo, featuring photographic images that explore color as a subject, muse, and scientific phenomenon. Utilizing color theory and the effects of color combinations, Color Cue exposes an underlying conceptual framework that brings into question how the environment and culture affect the perception of color. For centuries color was considered an unexplained phenomenon until Isaac Newton discovered color waves in the 1660’s through his experimentations with sunlight and prisms. Through the years, humanity has continued to make discoveries and create theories about how and why color is a part of the visual experience. Photography has played a vital role in advancing the understanding of the visual world—from the invention of color film to the creation of lenses, photography has helped us understand how we see.”

Color Cue: Explorations in Perception

Santa Fe Railyard (Near the Entrance of El Museo)
Santa Fe, NM 87501

Thursday, June 14 & Friday, June 15
7:00pm—10:00pm

Honored to receive an Individual Photographer’s Fellowship from the Aaron Siskind Foundation for 2017:

From the press release:

"The Aaron Siskind Foundation is pleased to announce the 2017 recipients of the Individual Photographer’s Fellowship offered to U.S. artists working in still photography and photography-based media. The Aaron Siskind Foundation works to promote and protect Aaron Siskind’s artistic legacy, to foster understanding of and appreciation for his work, and to support contemporary photographic art and artists. Aaron Siskind established this grant prior to his death in 1991 to assist independent creative photographers to pursue personal projects without bias to any particular form of the medium.

2017 Recipients:
Manal Abu-Shaheen, Long Island City, NY
Amanda Boe, Brooklyn, NY
Eli Durst, Long Island City, NY
Matthew Gamber, Worcester, MA
Anthony Hamboussi, Brooklyn, NY
Natalie Keyssar, Brooklyn, NY
Lauren Marsolier, Los Angeles, CA
Patricia Voulgaris, Levittown, NY

Full press release available from the Aaron Siskind Foundation.

From the exhibition statement: 

"This exhibition, Vagabond Time Killers, features the work of 53 emerging artists; the majority of which have come to us as artists-in-residence and have lived and worked here, in Wassaic. The works included depict each artist’s relationship, perception, and interpretation of our current location in space and time, and how art and its context can transform people, places, and ideas. Each of these artists and their work are part of Wassaic’s quirky history, and embody the spirit of the Vagabond Time Killers."

Maxon Mills Gallery
The Wassaic Project
37 Furnace Bank Rd.
Wassaic, NY 12592

May 20–September 24, 2017

Gallery Hours:
Friday 5:00–7:00pm
Saturday 12:00–7:00pm
Sunday 12:00–5:00pm

Collective Thinking, For Freedoms
Aperture Foundation
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10001

“Aperture has invited the artist-run super PAC, For Freedoms, to curate and implement an improvisational exhibition and series of dialogues that investigates the photographic collective as a model for responsive artistic production.

The collectives included in the exhibition are EverydayClimateChange, Invisible Borders, Kamoinge,Piece of Cake, Rawi(ya), and WRRQ.”

February 22–March 9, 2017
Opening Reception: Wednesday, February 22, 2017, 6:00–8:30 pm

"It follows that no landscape can be exclusively devoted to the fostering of only one identity. Our imaginative literature abounds in descriptions or utopias where everyone is civic-minded, and there are many descriptions of the delights of living in harmony with nature as certain pretechnological societies presumably did. But we sense that these visions are not true to human nature as we know it, and that these landscapes can never be realized; and that is why many of us find utopian speculations unprofitable." — J. B. Jackson

The Field
The Neon Heater
400 1/2 S Main St., Rm. 22
Findlay, OH 45840

August 4–18, 2016
Opening Reception: Thursday, August 4, 2016, 6:00–8:00pm

From the press release:

Fictional color
Broken games
Retired diagnostics
Functional fixedness
Corrupted transfers
Without instructions

Using a variety of processes, this exhibition is a play on the photograph as document. Documents are analogous to tools; they maintain a specific functional fixedness and resist reconfiguration by the user (reader). Useful documents substantiate history, whereas useless documents have no history. What was full of information is now empty.

Matthew Gamber / Archiv*
Gallery Kayafas
450 Harrison Avenue #37
Boston, MA 02118

January 15, 2016–April 3, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday, April 15 & May 6, 2016, 5:30–8:00pm

Work from Basic Ingredients of a Complex World featured in an article by Dan Weiskopf for his ongoing series Theory in Studio:

"Model-based photographs can have a distinctly digital appearance. But models themselves can be made of anything, including massive data structures, so these similarities are anything but superficial. Matthew Gamber has made several photographic images that demonstrate how traditional physical models are continuous with computational models. In Stanford Bunny (x2) (2012) and Utah Teapot (2013), the titular objects seem to emerge seamlessly from a uniform color field of blue or gray. The effect is eerie, and reminiscent of the ganzfeld hallucinations produced in psychophysical experiments; they appear to be conjured up by the brain’s own restless inability to cope with structureless input."

Read the rest of the article at Burnaway.

From the Press Release:

“Using a variety of photographic processes, the exhibition is an exploration of the meanings constructed around photography and the rules that govern its use. This exhibition is a survey of Gamber’s recent work based around his latest project, “Basic Ingredients of the Complex World,” his examination of how photography is both documentary and illusory – a paradox he demonstrates through experimentation with three-dimensional techniques.

Photography is a language by which we communicate information and ideas,” explains Gamber. “To be understood, we follow a shared set of rules, a kind of photographic grammar, where the messages implied in our pictures can be understood by others. The best way for me to participate in this dialogue is to create artwork in response to changing syntax throughout the history of photography. I hope viewers will gain broader understanding of how these implied conventions have fostered a variety of readings in the medium.”

Grammar
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery
College of the Holy Cross
January 20, 2016–February 27, 2016

Additional Programs:

Opening Reception
January 27, 5:00–6:30pm,

In Conversation with Nancy Burns and Ben Sloat
February 10, 5:00–6:00pm

Artist Talk
February 17, 12:00–1:00pm

From the Press Release:

”This winter Transformer Station presents Unfixed: The Fugitive Image, an exhibition featuring 11 national and international artists who are exploring the ephemeral image in a wide variety of ways with and without cameras, in still images as well as video. Although photographic images existed long before, the birth of photography is marked by the date when we learned to “fix” a representative image on a light sensitive surface permanently. 

Since then, the truth of photographic representation has been often questioned and much discussed. Less debated, but just as questionable is the permanence of the photographic image. Of course, eventually, all surfaces decay and images fade, but the artists in this exhibition embrace the fleeting nature of the image that is created by light and is eventually destroyed by it.”

Unfixed: The Fugitive Image 
Transformer Station
1460 West 29 Street
Cleveland, OH 44113

January 15, 2016–April 3, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday, January 15, 2016, 6:30–8:30pm

Additional Programs:
Matthew Gamber / Gallery Talk / Saturday, January 16, 2:00pm

Stanford Bunny (x2) and work form Any Color You Like profiled in the most recent issue of photograph for the column, In The Studio.

From the text by Adam Ryder:

“His new series, Basic Ingredients of a Complex World, was shown recently in Boston’s Gallery Kayafas, cleverly paired with the work of Harold Edgerton—famed progenitor of high-speed flash photography. Edgerton was a professor at MIT and is associated with his groundbreaking early work in “stroboscopic” image capture—producing iconic images of exploding apples or liquid in motion. His images are less art than they are exceptional documents of unseen forces, prime examples, in fact, of why photography has been a favorite medium of the sciences.”

Read the column in the March / April issue of photograph.

Work from Any Color You Like and Basic Ingredients of a Complex World were featured in an article by Darren Campion:

"One fundamental aspect of this transformation is key to Gamber’s series Any Color You Like, namely how the shift to monochrome exposes the conditional nature of photographic representation – and even of visual perception itself. 

At the same time, a photograph definitely has a sort of informational role–it can describe what something (an event, an object) looks like, but the caveat that Gamber astutely adds is that a photograph will only tell us what something looks like when photographed and that distinction is a considerable one."

Read the rest of the article at YET Magazine.

From Lodret Vandret:

Oct–Dec 2014: Enjoy Public Art Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand, Jan–Nov 2015: La Fototeca, Guatemala City

"After the One Thousand Books Art Book Festival, a curated selection of books from the bookmarket will be packed in a specially designed wooden crate that will function as a traveling book exhibition and sales platform. The exhibition will travel all over the world and visit museums, art centers and bookshops."

La Fototeca
Guatemala City, Guatemala 
January to March, 2015

Hagedorn Foundation Gallery
425 Peachtree Hills Ave NE No. 25
Atlanta, GA 30305
Extended: November 13, 2014–January 24, 2015

From the curator, Heidi Aishman:

"Hagedorn Foundation Gallery is pleased to present a two-person lens based exhibition “New Takes”. Artists Matthew Gamber and Peter Bahouth investigate various approaches to the photographic image, which resonate with a discourse about the philosophy of the medium, and tag ideas about the psychology of perception. Gamber’s work is abstract and technical, using photograms, abstracted photographs, and the projected image to open up a dialogue about surface information and culture."

Reception: Thursday, November 13, 2014 6:00–9:30pm
Gallery Talk: Saturday, November 15, 2014 11:00–12:00pm

Matter will be one of many books available for sale with Lodret Vandret. Look for them at Table B03 (in the dome). Printed Matter presents the ninth annual NY Art Book Fair, from September 26 to 28, 2014, at MoMA PS1, Long Island City, Queens.

THE NY ART BOOK FAIR 
September 26–28, 2014 
Preview: Thursday, September 25, 6-9pm 

MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Avenue
Long Island City, NY 11101

From the Exposures section of the September 2014 issue of PDN: 

"Sullivan’s background as a painter informs his photography, which is concerned with layers and texture. He employs various rephotography techniques, and his ethereal landscapes look like watercolors. Meanwhile, Gamber’s photographs trade heavily in the expectation of color and its absence. One of his images renders a color- blindness test in steely black-and-white. Another converts television color bars to a monochromatic image. Charland’s work appears as a form of anachronistic futurism: fire, light and electricity course through eerie tableaux created from everyday objects. Interspersed with their art are illustrations and photographs from the original Matter, their utilitarianism subverted by this re-contextualization."

Matter, 2014
Caleb Charland, Matthew Gamber
Johan Rosenmunthe, Bill Sullivan
Text by Dick Lyon

Colour offset printing
Edition of 200
21.21 x 27.36 cm, 88 pages
Design by Mary Voorhees Meehan
Edited by Lodret Vandret
ISBN 978-87-92988-07-2
Published by Vandret Publications

Available for purchase from Printed Matter.