Poetic Gaps: Opacity in the Photographic Imprint
- DURATIONAug 14, 2025 – Jan 16, 2026
- RECEPTIONFri, Sept 19, 2025. 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM
- CURATED BYKaillee Coleman and Fei Xie, Curatorial Assistants at Newcomb Art Museum
- ARTISTS & COLLECTIVESMarilyn Bridges, Brandon Chavis, Bruce Davidson, William DePauw, Jr., Debbie Fleming Caffery, Gabrielle Garcia Steib, Jan Gilbert, Shabez Jamal, Jeremy Jernegan, Los Carpinteros, Alen MacWeeney, Caleb Cain Marcus Ray K. Metzker, Cristina Molina, Michael Peel, Louis Stettner, and Andy Warhol
- EVENTS & PROGRAMS
- 3D SCAN OF THE GALLERIES
Alen MacWeeney. Bridesmaids Dresses, Aran Islands, 1985. From the Selected Images of Ireland series.
In his writings, Martinican poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant asserts that all people have the right to opacity – to remain elusive and partially hidden. Additionally, he conceptualizes ‘poetics’ as a set of in flux relations that bridges the gap between the known and the unknown. Poetic Gaps: Opacity in the Photographic Imprint uses these claims as a speculative prompt. Taking Newcomb Art Museum’s photographic collection as a point of departure, and extending into the realms of sculpture and installation, this exhibition follows a poetic and relational logic of that which refuses to be fully ‘caught,’ or fully known, within the photographic frame.
The artworks gathered here feature subjects, objects, and landscapes that push against the boundaries of the traditional photographic medium (which seeks to freeze a moment in time and capture a likeness fully). The play between presence and absence takes center stage. Denying the viewer the option of explicit narrative, photography is used instead as a means to consider the precarious nature of ‘capturing’ a subject, landscape, or moment in time completely.
Organized into a series of vignettes, Poetic Gaps asks: what happens beyond the photographic frame? What precedes and outlasts it? What keeps itself hidden and remains unseen?
