Reading

After Image opens January 29 at School 33 from 6-9 p.m.

Previous Story

New Works at the John Fonda Gallery Friday, January 29

Next Story

Evan La Londe: Waterfall (for Richard Brautigan) [...]

video still from Martijn Hendriks’ Untitled (or The Birds without the birds, or give us today our daily terror) (2008-ongoing)
After Image
Curated by Jamillah James
Opening Reception January 29th 6-9pm
Exhibition January 29 – March 27, 2010

The term afterimage describes when an image persists in one’s vision, even after exposure to the original image has ceased.

The artists in this exhibition employ aggressive appropriative strategies—hacking, remixing, erasing, translation, and so forth—to disorient viewer expectations and to offer new interpretative and narrative possibilities.

Matters of ownership and authorial privilege are now greatly problematized by the volume and fluid interchange of information on the Internet. Artists are reflecting this cultural shift with a more deliberate presence—literal or technical—in their work, and, especially, interjected into that of another. Unusual juxtapositions invest mundane or familiar objects with new vitality and forge new histories. Simple cut-and-paste (by hand or digitally) becomes a revelatory and critical act. Referencing and borrowing are now commonplace, and are no longer exclusive to new media work.

Ultimately, these practices exploit the rift between history and the formation of memory—how do we reconcile an image or object’s original intent, meaning, and context with new exposures? If an image has a past and a present, who determines its future and how? The artists selected for AFTER IMAGE take this moment as an invitation to intervene, and to further diffuse the concept of artist as sole maker of meaning.

Related Stories
Bringing the Life and Legacy of Baby Laurence to Stage

It is late February 2025, the premier night of The Baby Laurence Legacy Project: Tracing Steps, Ali’s epic two-hour performance three years in the making, yet as the interdisciplinary artist begins to dance, I can feel the separative notions of time and place bend to the summoning of her feet.

Baltimore art news updates from independent & regional media

This week's news includes: Artscape updates, Trans Visibility quilt displayed on the Mall, Preakness past and present in photos, Joyce J. Scott receives honorary doctorate from UB, John Waters weighs in on Carly Hayden's firing and how to (mis)behave at his book signings, Guns of Steel, and more!

"the dance floor, the hospital room, and the kitchen table" revisits the AIDS Crisis with Candor and Courage

Future Ghost, a Queer performance collective that is the brainchild of Lyam B. Gabel and Joseph Amodei, created the production out of a desire to bring light to not just the disease, but to the people who experienced and lived through this uniquely disastrous phenomenon.

Party Photos from BmoreArt's Release for Issue 19 on May 15

In Issue 19, we celebrate Baltimore’s “hidden gems” through the stories of individuals and organizations often operating below the public radar but making a solid contribution to city life.