Fringe: Clint Baclawski

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is pleased to announce Fringe, its inaugural solo exhibition by photographic light installation artist Clint Baclawski opening Friday, September 6, 2019. The exhibition features a site-specific installation comprised of 108 light tubes, yellow mirrored Plexiglas, photographic imagery, and a blue PVC strip curtain. In the exhibition, Baclawski questions the notion of boundaries. When and where does the art exhibition begin? What can be touched, traced, or felt? Where does the exhibition end? The immersive installation will challenge the viewer’s senses, understanding of color, and comfort with imperfection. Awash with a mix of deep cobalt blues, brilliant reflective yellows, and with religious iconography, the piece will push literal and figurative edges. In the process of creating the installation, Fringe became a deeply personal work for the artist.

In 2014, Baclawski photographed a pink church on the outskirts of the Grand Canyon in the desolate landscape of the American Southwest with a large format 4x5 film camera. The image was captured on a solo trip, which has often served as a grounding spirituality for the artist. Upon departing LAX airport, the film box was opened by TSA accidentally and exposed to natural (blue) light. The accidental exposure created a yellow haze on the film; yellow being the opposite of the blue light. The now yellow image consumes the gallery in this site-specific artwork. A three-sided, blue PVC curtain designed to block out light places the viewer on the outskirts of the work, acting as a physical and metaphorical boundary. The act of stepping through the curtain and feeling its weight on your shoulders is symbolic of “walking towards the light.” The intentional abruptness of the light installation requiring a momentary readjustment of vision. For Baclawski, Fringe is both a personal exploration of traditional organized religion, while also an unexpected resurrection of past work that has not been exhibited in over ten years.

All of Baclawski’s work explores photography by experimenting with methods, formats and materials that push the confines of the medium. The scale compels the viewer to engage with his installations. Leaning in to observe a detail, the image dissipates, dissolves, contracts, reveals a portion of itself then expands and coalesces once again with distance and the walk along the length of its illuminated landscape. Baclawski is known for creating photographic light installations that move the medium into newly deconstructed ground beyond the tradition and constraints of the photographic frame.