October 16 – November 22, 2008
M.Y. Art Prospects is pleased to announce Yesterday, Today, and, Tomorrow, a solo exhibition by Marc Lepson.
In July 2002, Marc Lepson responded to 9/11 with his installation entitled Breathe: a meditation on claustrophobia, confinement and comfort. It covered one side of the space with screen-printed images of the Metropolitan Detention Center, where many immigrants were held with no formal charges. On the opposite side were images of blossoming cherry trees representing the freedom outside the center. As a reminder of the time spent by these detainees, enlarged newspaper texts (also screen prints) accompanied the images.
For this exhibition, Marc Lepson creates another simultaneously comforting and disquieting space, filling the gallery walls with digital images enlarged from low-resolution files taken by a cell phone camera. With this super handy tool, the artist's viewpoints travel from New York Times front pages to public spaces traversing spheres both domestic and global —from former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to a sea turtle in a Brooklyn aquarium, from mounted policemen in Gaza to the artist's son in the bathtub.
As newspaper pictures highlight ceaseless conflicts and despairs, lies and hypocrisy around the world, blissful images of the artist's young children—as well as their fascination with rockets and animals—raise questions about a better, more hopeful future
All of these images are collectively aimed at reconciling the competing temporalities in our life: centered then marginalized, focused then obscured, featured then forgotten. The exhibition also boldly challenges the conventional image-making process. By adjusting and enlarging low resolution digital files, Lepson emphasizes their origins as well as the process of absorbing information through media (old and new) and experience.
Marc Lepson holds an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in Printmaking (1997) and a BA from SUNY at Albany in English literature (1991). His solo exhibitions include Boston, New York, and Chicago. He has held numerous group exhibitions in New York, San Francisco, Albany, Buffalo and Boston. This year he participated in a number of group shows including 1968: Then and Now at the Nathan Cummings Foundation and New Prints/Summer 2008 at International Print Center (both in New York). Marc Lepson lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
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