Overview

“In the best modernist tradition, [Deschenes] pushes against the basic terms by which photography is conventionally defined: instantaneity, veracity, fixity, or reproducibility.” — curator and critic Matthew Witkovsky Deschenes uses durational photogram exposure to create unique, shifting surfaces that frequently function as sculptural or architectural, rather than photographic, objects. In her recent work, Deschenes exposes photographic paper to the night sky, develops it, and fixes the photogram with silver toner, creating misty silver surfaces brindled with slight changes in hue that are affected either by exposure to ambient light or the hand-application of the toner itself. Some of these photograms remain unframed and oxidize over time, further problematizing the role of the photograph as fixed image on surface. Instead, purged of representational content, the photograph, in Deschenes’s practice, functions as an object that records how it has been, and continues to be, acted upon. Deschenes’ work is held in the permanent collections of Centre Pompidou, Paris; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Art Institute of Chicago; ICA/Boston; Pinault Collection, Paris; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Milwaukee Art Museum; Princeton University Art Museum; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.

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Liz Deschenes (b. 1966) lives and works in New York. In her earlier work, Deschenes utilized landscape images as an entry point to address self-reflexive concepts of the medium. In her recent work, Deschenes exposes photographic paper to the night sky, develops it, and fixes the photogram with silver toner, creating misty silver surfaces brindled with slight changes in hue – affected either by exposure to ambient light, or the hand-application of the toner itself. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at ICA Boston, MASS MoCA, Walker Art Center, and Secession (Vienna), and major group exhibitions at institutions across the US and around the world. She received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1988. She is represented by Miguel Abreu Gallery in New York and Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco.

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