Crisis of Image

First Floor Galleries

Featured Artists: Ayanna Dozier, Amy Elkins, Melissa Joseph, Lydia McCarthy, Triton Mobley, Steve Pauley, Sasha Rudensky, and Rob Swainston and Zorawar Sidhu

Curated by Jacob Rhodes, Kris Racaniello, and Lisa Schilling

Catalog essay by Kirsten Gill

The artists in Crisis of Image do not seek to escape the image, nor do they seek to make new images. They seek equity in our saturated visual world by developing new methods, strategies, and modes of access in relation to the production of images.

Images have been contested and called impersonators throughout time. Our saturated visual culture has produced new calls for image suppression – but why? One answer might be that the recent abundance of image making technologies has made visual production more accessible. In the 1970s and 80s images were claimed and revitalized by artists whose right to produce them had been historically denied – resulting in the emergence of new feminist, BIPoC, and queer representational strategies. Those efforts were often met with attempts at censorship and repression.

More recently, the overwhelming volume of images in contemporary life has created a new path for suppression, as the sheer abundance of images in circulation buries or represses those that challenge existing power structures. Crisis of Image introduces artists who resist the call for image suppression, focusing instead on developing methods of image transformation and production, creating new strategies for breaking through the visual overabundance of our current moment.

Crisis of Image is curated by Field Projects, a collectively run, artist-centric gallery established in 2011. Field Projects is committed to creating equity and opportunities for artists by placing community support over market profits. Based in Chelsea, NYC, Field Projects features bi-monthly onsite exhibitions as well as satellite shows, art fairs, Field Residency, Field Pod, and online exhibitions.

Related Events
Celebrate New Exhibitions
Saturday / February 25 / 5pm-8pm

Crisis of Image in Conversation: Expanding Photography
with Melissa Joseph, Sasha Rudensky, and Amy Elkins, in conversation with author Kirsten Mairead Gill
Thursday / May 4 / 6pm EST

Additional Information
Crisis of Image Catalog

Artist Bios

AYANNA DOZIER
b. 1990, Riverside, CA
Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY

Ayanna Dozier is a Brooklyn-based artist-writer working across film, performance, and installation. She received her PhD in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University in 2020. Her films have screened at film festivals across the United States and the United Kingdom and her work has been exhibited across the United States including at Microscope Gallery, The Shed, Westbeth Gallery, Evening Hours, Anthology Film Archives (all New York, NY), BRIC (Brooklyn, NY), and the Block Museum (Evanston, IL).

AMY ELKINS
b. 1979, Venice, CA
Lives and works in the Bay Area, CA

Amy Elkins is a visual artist based in the Bay Area. She received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts and her MFA in Art Practice from Stanford University. She works in photography, installation, and sculpture and has spent the past fifteen years researching, creating, and exhibiting work that explores the multifaceted nature of masculine identity, as well as the psychological and sociological impacts of incarceration. Elkins has been exhibited and published both in the United States and internationally, and co-founded Women in Photography (WIPNYC) with Cara Phillips in 2008.

MELISSA JOSEPH
b. 1980, St. Marys, PA
Lives and works in New York, NY

Melissa Joseph is a New York-based artist and independent curator. Her work addresses themes of memory, family history, and the politics of how we occupy spaces. Her work has shown across the United States and internationally, and has been featured in Hyperallergic, Artnet, New American Paintings,
Le Monde, CNN, and Architectural Digest.

LYDIA McCARTHY
b. 1981, Melrose, MA
Lives and works in Rochester, NY

Lydia McCarthy’s work has been exhibited in the United States and internationally. She has been reviewed and published in The New Yorker, Art F City, The Wall Street Journal, Dossier, and the Huffington Post. McCarthy’s book Vision 5: The Vibratory Waves of External Unity was released with Silent Face Projects at the New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1 in 2017. Lydia lives and works in Rochester, NY, where she is pursuing a Master of Social Work.

TRITON MOBLEY
b. 1979, Miami, FL
Lives and works in Providence, RI

Triton Mobley is a new media artist and researcher whose interventionist works and guerrilla performances have been exhibited across the United States and internationally. Mobley holds an MFA in Digital+Media from the Rhode Island School of Design and earned his PhD in Media Arts + Practice—as an Annenberg Fellow—from the University of Southern California. Triton’s research is framed within economies of digital perceptions and cultural optics—problematizing notions of being situated between the discontinuities of emergent technologies and communities of marginality.

STEVE PAULEY
b. 1973, Elkin, NC
Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY

Trained in tombstone carving, Steve Pauley has shown across the United States and internationally, including at Skolska28 Prague, Czech Republic. New York Times art critic Holland Cotter described Pauley’s work as the most striking and unorthodox in the exhibition Bird Flew, curated by Robert Storr, at Tribes Gallery in New York. Steve Pauley received his MFA in 2004 from Maryland Institute College of Art.

SASHA RUDENSKY
b. 1979, Moscow, Soviet Union
Lives and works in New Haven, CT

Sasha Rudensky is a photographer whose work has been exhibited widely in the United States and internationally. Her debut solo show Tinsel and Blue was exhibited at Sasha Wolf Gallery in New York, NY in 2016. Her work is included in a number of public collections including Musee de l’Elysee, Yale University Art Gallery, and Center of Creative Photography in Tucson amongst others. Sasha received her MFA from Yale University School of Art and BA from Wesleyan University. Her work has appeared in ArtForum, The New Yorker, Harper’s, Aperture, The Times UK, and others.

ZORAWAR SIDHU
b. 1985, Ludhiana, India
Lives and works in New York, NY

ROB SWAINSTON
b. 1970, Mechanicsburg, PA
Lives and works in New York, NY

Zorawar Sidhu and Rob Swainston explore the intersection of historical print processes with contemporary technologies. They have exhibited together at Petzel Gallery (New York, NY), the Princeton University Art Museum (Princeton, NJ), Five Myles (Brooklyn, NY), 601 ArtSpace, the Scully Tomasko Foundation, and Field Projects Gallery (all New York, NY). Their work is in public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Hall Foundation, the US Department of State, the Kupferstichkabinett Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation, and the Syracuse University Art Museum. Zorawar Sidhu was born in 1985 in Ludhiana, India, and Rob Swainston was born in 1970 in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. They both currently live and work in New York City.