Events
Oscar Palacio: American Places
Oct 8 2010 - Dec 3 2010
About the Exhibit
In American Places we'll see, for the first time, images from both of Oscar Palacio's recent bodies of work, History Revisited and Un-Familiar Territory. The works of History Revisited--sites of conquest, national pride, or shame--are juxtaposed against the works from Un-Familiar Territory, which show both the familiar and forgotten, the grandiose and banal, in sites closer to what we migh associate as "home."
Mt. Rushmore. Gettysburg. Manzanar. The monumental structure built to house the historic site itself. The white picket fence whose shape mimics that of the stained glass windows behind it. Weathered fence boards carefully altered to accomodate the lean of a tree now chopped down. Palacio's images are gently humorous, allowing us entry to consider our relationship with the natural world.
"From our attempt to contain the wild to simulating the very nature we seek to destroy, my work focuses on the complex relationship among human beings and the natural world. These photographs continue my investigation of boundaries in the United States, from anonymous prosaic scenes of everyday life to popular historical sites. What do we choose to memorialize and how do the representational roles of both architecture and photography shape and form experience."
About the Artist
Oscar Palacio is a Columbian-born photographer based in Rochester, New York. He received his MFA in photography from the Massachusetts College of Art + Design in 1998 and a bachelor of architecture from the University of Miami in 1992. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University; the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona; the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover; and the Light Work and List Visual Arts Center at MIT. He is currently assistant professor of photography at Rochester Institute of Technology.
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