2022

2021

2018

 September 9 - December 11, 2018

CARISSA MEIER experiments with the materiality of photography and its analog processes, composing images reminiscent of natural landscapes.  Responding to the ubiquity of images in our daily experience, Meier examines our relationship to image-making, which, similarly to nature, is one of passive consumption. It is often pressured that photography’s primary role is capturing and documenting the world representationally, but the artist forces us to question this by pushing the bounds of the medium.

Meier makes photographs in a variety of ways. She dips and swivels paper in ether cyanotype and Van Dyke liquid sensitizer, which are light-sensitive chemicals that turn blue or brown respectively where the liquid has touched the material when exposed. These compositions are then rephotographed on a light table, sometimes individually, and other times a few different compositions are layered onto one another, creating a new landscape that merges the blues and browns. Another part of her practice includes making textures on paper with drawing materials like charcoal, where Meier begins several trials of translating from material to image, back to material. She has digitally photographed the textures with analog, instant photography, such as Polaroid or Instax Fujifilm, and then scratched into the surface of the developing film, altering the chemical development of the photograph and leaving residual marks. Meier also documents the 30-minute developing process on video for each photograph, which she compiles into moving image. 

Photo-making is repositioned within the realm of materiality, where the artist’s hand and her intuitive decision-making drive the focus, instead of the eye through the lens. In this spirit, the oscillation between play and risk becomes an important component in the work, not only of the artist but also the viewer. Meier’s work encourages the viewer to doubt the content and attempt to understand the purpose of the image—What is the photograph representing? Yet, the artist denies the viewer of any concrete definition; instead, they must utilize their imagination to assemble a narrative.

- Lynette Miranda, essay from the Ground Floor, A Biennial Exhibition of New Art From Chicago catalogue, 2018

September 21 – October 27, 2018

February 27 - March 24, 2018

2017

September 15 – October 21, 2017

May 10 - 28, 2017

CARISSA MEIER is frank about her “ability to mimic through impression and impersonation”. Colleagues, teachers and celebrities have all been grist for her verbal mill. She admits a transference of this talent into her visual explorations, but says: “I can never create the thing itself, I can only try to mimic through observation, intuition, and experimentation, using materials and methods that then create something entirely of its own”. Her title, “Terra Incognita”, reminds us that we are on an expedition to unexplored places that challenge our cognitive assumptions. We must stretch to recognize a landscape comfortable enough to inhabit, or at least to visit. In fact, Meier’s works compel their own reading and never conform to comfortable equivalents.

Reminiscent of other contemporary artists, such as Meghann Riepenhoff and Allison Rossiter, Meier exploits the micro worlds of controlled, photo-chemical interactions. Her use of cyanotype and Van Dyke processes demonstrates a love of materials as well as the wonders of limited predictability. The processes she employs are often analogous to those exhibited in the landscapes we conjure when attempting to reconcile her images. Chemical fissures and striations are reminiscent of tectonic fractures. Stains of blue, green, violet, orange, brown and yellow mimic those found in volcanic soils and subarctic tundras. Meier’s work however, enjoys the ontological benefits of multiple technologies. Photographic technique is applied generatively, so her experiments with drawing, toning, folding, and re-photographing produce extremely subtle modulations of figuration and spatial effect. She uses light in multiple stages of image development, and has even included actual fixtures into some works–a tenacious luminosity that alludes to astral emissions and vaporous ambience, yet returns the viewer’s attentions back to the agents of production.

Is “lifelikeness” a reference to an image’s resemblance to another object, or to its own materiality- its own objectness? The best of Meier’s works wash over you and demand complete attention. They are not “like” anything, yet arouse multiple associations– one state giving way to another. As we navigate the experience of each level, we are forced to apprehend multiple considerations and levels of involvement. Meier is unapologetically forthright. The residues of process are raw and revealed; to perceive her work symbolically would be excessive and disingenuous. When writing about 19th Century artists Rodin and others, Robert Morris references their “registering the plasticity of material in autobiographical terms”; referring to the traces of sketching and process that remained in the completed work, he asks, “how to get beyond the artist’s hand?” Morris demands a “more direct revelation of matter itself (through) investigation of means: tools, methods of making, nature of material”.

Photography is inherently about representation, but there has always been a discrepancy between the image and the photographic object. In many ways, it is this connect/disconnect that drives the photographic enterprise. Gombrich maintained that “all art is image making and all image making is rooted in the creation of substitutes”. But what happens when an image both corresponds to and conflicts with our expectations? How far can the artist stray when making a substitute, and when does the substitute stray so far from indexing the real, that it attains independence and, ultimately, a new identity? There’s a unique tension between what appears familiar and reconcilable, versus that which is unknowable and enigmatic. This wavering experience is what Carissa Meier’s work is all about.

- Jay Wolke, Professor Columbia College Chicago 
essay from the Persist, Photography MFA Thesis catalogue, 2017