Long View Gallery presents Mike Weber

April 22 - May 20

opening reception
Thursday, April 22, 2010
6:30pm - 9:30pm

Food and beverage provided by José Andrés Catering with Ridgewells
and live music by jazz quartet Laissez Foure

long view gallery
1234 Ninth St, Washington, DC 20001

rsvp
By April 19th to
infoATlongviewgallery.com | 202.232.4788
longviewgallery.com

Long View Gallery presents Mike Weber's latest series of work, Identify. In this exhibition, Weber explores concepts of commemoration and heritage, including his own lineage, as he symbolically reinvents the life stories of his unknown or forgotten subjects. He selectively edits and reframes vintage photographs, which derive from both his family's collection and estate sales, into newly composed digital prints on canvas. This process of converting an analog photograph into a digital copy unearths previously overlooked details that shed light on the biography of the sitter and his/her relationship with the faceless photographer. He augments these details with layers of paint and unorthodox collage materials, intensifying the mood of the original photograph. Weber?s signature, multicolored strip of paint chips reiterates the concept of genealogy: the offspring of each hue is named and codified according to how they relate to one another. The inclusion of scant, stenciled text invites the viewer to speculate the historical importance of the depicted sitter. Ultimately, his artistic praxis ascribes a new narrative to his source materials and re-presents them as glossy, modern images.