Meghan Boody: The Lighthouse Project II: Visitation

PRESS RELEASE

Affirmation Arts, in association with Rick Wester Fine Art, is pleased to present an exhibition of the fullest realization to date of Meghan Boody’s The Lighthouse and How She Got There.  First shown in the fall of 2008, Boody continues her exploration into an invented world traversed by a young girl in strange lands wrought from the artist’s imagination and thus transformed by her journey. One of the longest working artists in digital photography, Boody has sustained her cultish role inspiring younger artists for whom this revolution is now the norm. This exhibition brings together for the first time the complete series of large prints in their naturalist-inspired frames, carved with meticulously rendered sculptural relief.

Boody’s Lighthouse photographs, while obviously manufactured, maintain a realism of light, shadow, form and perspective. She structures the images as if the wild vistas were seen through a camera’s viewfinder. The intensely colored palette recalls nature, but tweaks perception slightly, as if the world was viewed through uniquely filtered glasses.

The works are titled from the opening lines of Victorian novels featuring an orphan as the protagonist. Like these characters, Boody’s anonymous travelers undergo metamorphoses. They venture back and forth, lost in unchartered territory. These explorations lie at the core of Boody’s work. While previous series used fantastical symbolism to depict inner change, the Lighthouse pictures deploy nature to evoke the wilderness of the human psyche. Based on a non-linear narrative, Lighthouse nevertheless occurs in time as the main character has visibly entered young womanhood during the making of the photographs over the past four years.

Boody designed an intricately sculpted frame for each piece in the series. Works of art in their own right, the frames question standard framing practices and entangle the viewer in another level of symbolism and meaning.  Medallions of metamorphosing hybrid specimens form the lower border, while a taxidermist’s glass eye ensconced at the top peers down at the viewer. Hence, the picture looks back at the viewer; a subtle reminder that photography is always about the eye, and alluding to an all-seeing force enmeshed in the image.

The artist will be present for an opening cocktail reception on March 1st that celebrates her work and Affirmation Arts’ first solo artist exhibition.  The reception is open to the public.

On March 5th, during The Armory Show 2011, Affirmation Arts hosted a panel discussion with Meghan Boody as well as other artists and scholars titled Metamorphic Pathways in Alternative Realities in the Arts.  The discussion, moderated by Affirmation Arts director Marla Goldwasser, was followed by a Champagne brunch in the main gallery amongst Meghan Boody: The Lighthouse Project II: Visitation. 

On Saturday, March 19th, Affirmation Arts hosted a cocktail reception during the AIPAD Photography Show New York.  The public, as well as AIPAD attendees, were invited to view the works and meet Boody, who was in attendance.

All images courtesy Rick Wester Fine Art.