Locks Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Philadelphia artist Eileen Neff. On view from March 5 to April 10, 2004, this exhibition features recently completed digital photographs and text-based works created during the artist's recent residency at the MacDowell artist colony in Peterborough, NH.
Borrowing the title of American poet Wallace Stevens’ 1942 poem, "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction," this exhibition features a selection of images simultaneously romantic in their lush photographic use of color and light, and conceptually absorbing in their evocative depiction of an artist’s creative process. These scenes from Neff’s residency—a selection of landscape imagery and domestic interiors—bear only faint traces of the digital manipulation used to create them and collectively describe the small epiphanic moments of recognition when an artist is immediately inspired by an image or idea. The artist has chosen to present these large-format digital prints alongside three text panels which include subtitles from Stevens’ poem. These isolated texts serve as a set of informal captions for the entire exhibition and describe an ideal set of conditions for the product of a creative process.
A full-color illustrated catalog of the exhibition is available, featuring an essay by Thyrza Nichols Goodeve. Ms. Goodeve’s writing on contemporary art and digital culture has appeared in Artforum, Art in America, The Guggenheim Magazine, and Artbyte. She is a former senior instructor at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, NY.
This is Eileen Neff’s second solo exhibition at Locks Gallery. Her work has been previously reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, and The New York Times. She is the recipient of numerous commissions and awards including fellowships from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Pew Fellowships in the Arts. She is currently an adjunct professor in the graduate department of the University of the Arts, Philadelphia.
