John Messinger

We Dream Alone

November 20, 2014 - January 8, 2015

UNIX Gallery is pleased to present New York-based artist John Messinger in his first solo exhibition, We Dream Alone. Messinger (b. 1984) received his Bachelor’s degree in Photojournalism from the College of Communica- tion at Boston University and his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. We Dream Alone, curated by Lyle Rexer, will open at UNIX Gallery on November 20, 2014 with a reception from 6 - 8 PM.

John Messinger’s photographic tapestries examine the proliferation and ubiquity of photography in the digital age. His process of taking instant photographs directly from stills on new and outdated technology manifests by combining the hundreds of varying images to transform them into a single visual experience. His work fuses in- dexical and abstract imagery to question the notion of photography, photographer, and subject. Directly inspired by the notions of singularity and time, Messinger creates something entirely brand new out of the obsolete.

We Dream Alone features large-scale, 3-dimensional, photographic objects, composed of hundreds of Fuji Instant Film photographs. Each piece captures the collective imagery of a large computer monitor, using a Polaroid Land Camera 250, c. 1967. The resulting photographs are arranged together, edge to edge, using acid free tape. Because an instant photograph is ultimately a positive picture without a negative, each of these works is an irreproducible 1 of 1 image. Messinger conducts the analogue and digital clash into a resounding visual harmony.

Messinger’s work has appeared in the pages of Art In America, Photograph Magazine, and W Magazine, and was recently added to the permanent collection at The Watermill Center in New York. Messinger was accepted to the prestigious Watermill Center Residency program in 2013. In collaboration with Robert Wilson and other interna- tional artists, Messinger created site-specific, large-scale instillations that challenged and extended the existing norms of imagery performance and practice. His work is also featured in The Self-Processing Exhibition at The Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, which runs from October 4, 2014 - January 4, 2015.

John Messinger lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. 

John Messinger