Jennifer Brandon & Andréanne Michon: Colliding
Exhibition Dates: April 11 - June 8, 2019
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 11, 2019, 6 - 8 PM
PhotoAlliance Lecture Series: Friday, April 19, 2019, 7:30 PM
Andréanne Michon and Aspen Mays @ San Francisco Art Institute, Osher Lecture Hall

PRESS RELEASE
When Chemicals and Jennifer Brandon’s photos collide at SF Camerawork, San Francisco Chronicle, Sam Whiting, April 17, 2019
Colliding: Jennifer Brandon and Andréanne Michon at SF Camerawork, Art Practical, Tamara Porras, May 1, 2019
Rethinking the Physical Limits of Photography, Hyperallergic, Roula Seikaly, May 27, 2019

Colliding presents two early-career artists working on the conceptual edges of the photographic medium and its ability to represent the physical world. For this collaborative presentation, Jennifer Brandon and Andréanne Michon have carefully intertwined several series of work around a shared interest in how the tools of photography can be exploited to connect us to our material surroundings. The exhibition includes photography, video, sculpture, and works on a variety of papers and substrates.

Working with simple and often unexpected subject matter, both artists employ an array of photographic techniques, integrating lens-based and camera-less images, film and digital, and layers of print-making methods. With subjects ranging from volcanic ash to ordinary darkroom chemicals, both artists make use of photography’s ability to describe, record, and imprint visual information. Their resultant works are at once familiar and mysterious, mundane and sublime. These ambiguous images invite us to reconsider our perception and understanding of the world around us.

San Francisco based artist Jennifer Brandon experiments with substances common to photography and often found in the traditional darkroom: mounting foam, foil, silver leaf, and aluminum paints. Typically, these materials recede into the photograph and disappear, but Brandon harnesses each material’s sensitivity to light, manipulates scale, and transforms these common materials into the visual apex of her work. The resultant images magnify surface qualities and highlight the unique visual effects of her humble materials while at the same time transmogrifying them beyond recognition. Solarizes silver gelatin prints evoke fluid movement; collaged silver leaves suggest textured topographies. Scale seems to vacillate from micro to macro and familiar forms become unique impressions in response to the tactile manipulation of the artist’s hand.

Toronto-based artist Andréanne Michon has developed a photographic practice that incorporates a series of exchanges between traditional mediums, incorporating straight photography, printmaking, video, sound, sculpture, and pyrogravure. Michon’s processes, which depend on chemical reactions, pressure, heat, darkness, and light, parallel the processes that drive environmental change. These photographic processes, which transmute materials into new substances, seek to interpret geological formations and investigate the earth’s evolution. Film is transformed by heat into undulating sculptures, and carved outlines on linoleum blocks are transformed into lustrous silver gelatin prints. The resulting abstracted images and manipulated objects are photographic meditations on tectonic, volcanic, and cataclysmic forces.

Colliding is generously supported by The Bernard Osher Foundation, the Fleishhacker Foundation, and L’imprimerie centre d’artistes.

ARTIST BIOS:

JENNIFER BRANDON
Jennifer Brandon lives and works in San Francisco, CA. In 2007, she received her MFA at Mills College, preceded by an MA in 2005 and BA in 2004 in Art with an emphasis in painting at California State University, Northridge, as well as a BA in 1997 in English Literature at San Francisco State University. Residencies, awards and fellowships include The Rayko Artist in Residence, The Herringer Prize for Excellence in Studio Art and The Catherine Morgan Trefethen Fellowship in Art. Brandon currently teaches at Mills College and has taught at San Francisco State University, Sonoma State University, and UC Berkeley.

ANDRÉANNE MICHON
Andréanne Michon lives and works in Toronto, Canada. She received a BFA, with distinction, from Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) in 2010 and she completed an MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2013. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in North America and Europe and her work has been selected in international juried shows by important curators at major museums. Michon’s practice includes a variety of media such as photography, printmaking, sculpture, video & sound, which she often explores in artist residencies; notably at L’imprimerie centre d’artistes in Montreal, at the Vermont Studio Center, and at SÍM Reykjavík in Iceland.