BUCKHANNON — ART26201 will present “TIME EXPOSED,” a solo exhibition by photographer Stephen Lawson, Friday, January 7, 2022, at the M.I.B. GALLERY in the Colonial Arts Center.
There will be a special opening artist’s reception from 4 to 8 p.m., and Lawson will give a special introduction at 5 p.m. Reservations are recommended for the artist’s introduction, and they can be emailed to info@ART26201.com.
In addition to the opening event on January 7, the M.I.B. GALLERY will be open from 4-8 p.m. on January 8,
14, 15, 21, 22, 28 and 29.
All events at the M.I.B. GALLERY are free and open to the public. Significant financial assistance for the Colonial Arts Center Rehabilitation project has been provided by the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History; ART26201; and Buckhannon Community Theatre.
About Stephen Lawson:
Stephen Lawson, born in Glasgow, Scotland, studied figurative sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art with a pupil of Charles Despiau. He received an undergraduate degree in 1967, and an MFA from the University of Colorado, in 1970.
Lawson taught sculpture at Ohio State University for six years, prior to his relocation to West Virginia.
Artist’s Statement:
Over a period of years my work grew from first roots in sculpture, briefly through Land Art, to a relationship with photo-based art in the landscape, using self-generated camera equipment. Not having had previous photographic experience, this took time and interim failures to gain, in parallel with basic hacksaw and file metalworking.
The images are obviously visual representations, but they are also temporal ones. These are four dimensional in concept and execution, but most frequently only two in the presentation. The concept of space and time is hopefully reconstructed in the mind of the viewer.
My various self-realized cameras give me a fleeting insight across that dimensional divide. Be it a year passing across the image or but moments, this compression suggests we stand back and contemplate, which is always a good thing. I may have been too preoccupied with time passing to notice the passage of it, myself.
The year and day-long works might be thought of as bringing to bear a concentrated gaze; the brief, dynamic shots read as a glance, in the turn of the head, as the eye itself sees, before the mind edits this to a visual memory, often as a ‘still.’ Indeed, all of the images could be thought of as movies presented as stills.
Works are generally titled in handwritten legends; firstly as a homage to the pioneer photographers who likewise went out with their cumbersome apparati to hazard perhaps but one exposure, and secondly, to tell viewers sufficiently that they know what underlies what they see.
The work is presented in a poetic mode that asks one to stand briefly outside the usual flow of time, hopefully causing us to reflect on our own ‘time-in-the-world’, individually, culturally, and perhaps now, even as a species.
