Abakus Projects is pleased to present The Eye Is Not a Camera, an exhibition of photographs by Liz Liguori. Utilizing the cameraless photographic technique, Liguori’s “electromagnetograms” are created by exposing a single frequency or pure waveform of refracted light from a laser beam onto light-sensitive photo paper to create large-scale abstract works. Liguori’s unique process began in 2011 in collaboration with Jessie and Sally Mann for The Mountain Lake Workshop and has been developed solely by Liguori since.

The Eye Is Not a Camera opens with a reception this coming Friday, October 7, during the SoWa First Friday events at 450 Harrison Avenue and will remain on view every Sunday through the end of October or by appointment any other time through the end of the month.

LIZ LIGUORI
The Eye Is Not a Camera
October 7 - October 31, 2022

Opening reception with the artist: Friday, October 7, 6 - 8:30 PM

On view every Sunday from 12 - 4 pm and by appointment through October 31

Click HERE to view works from this exhibition.

Liz Liguori: Light of Hand

Curated by Elæ Moss

La Mama Galleria is pleased to present the solo exhibition Liz Liguori: Light of Hand, which traces the evolution of the artist’s exploration of light in space through her electromagnetogram process. The exhibition, curated by Elæ Moss, will be on view January 13 ­– February 25, 2022. 

Liguori deconstructs the elements of photography to create cameraless images in the darkroom through a process she calls the electromagnetogram. The artist paints with light, exposing photosensitive paper to its ephemeral movements through space. Although she approaches each piece with a plan, this process invites countless opportunities for chance and discovery in the pitch black of the darkroom.

Light of Hand features never before seen unique gelatin silver prints, whose massive shifts in scale—from 7 x 8-foot diptychs to more intimate pieces only a few inches across—highlight the painterly capacities of light refraction and optical amplification of water and sound frequency. These abstract works, focusing on the artist’s newest experimental darkroom procedures, showcase the depth and tonal possibilities achieved through Liguori’s experimentation with objects, photochemistry, and paper. 

Employing a strategy borne out of Liguori’s background creating immersive light experiences in New York City nightclubs, electromagnetograms reveal the transformative, meditative power of light and sound the artist learned to manipulate in those spaces. Visitors will reconsider their own relationship with not only the invisible but also the intangible—the ineffable qualities of light, water, and sound that shape our world. 

In addition to the prints, Light of Hand includes a documentary short on Liguori’s studio process. A book on Liguori’s work will also be produced to coincide with the exhibition.

Liz Liguori (b. 1979) is an artist and light designer based in New York City. She received her MFA in Creative Technologies from Virginia Tech and her BFA in Studio Art from Drew University. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Lazy Susan Gallery and 222 Bowery Art in New York City and she has shown at museums and galleries across the country. 

Elæ Moss (b. 1979) is a nonbinary multimodal artist-researcher, producer, and educator. They recently co-curated [move semantics]: rules of unfolding with Jeff Kasper at EFA Project Space in New York City. Moss’s projects and performances have shown at STWST/Ars Electronica, Usdan Gallery, Judson Church, the Segal Center’s Performing Knowledge Festival, SOHO20, Dixon Place, and the Exponential Festival, among others. They are a Professor at Pratt Institute and the Founder and Creative Director of The Operating System & Liminal Lam, and publish widely.  

Press contact: Kate Greenberg| kategreenberg@gmail.com | 917.375.4333

The Electromagnetogram Series began as a collaboration between artists Liz Liguori and Jessie Mann in response to how digital photography has taken over the representationalist work that photography once took over from painting. As Clement Greenburg pointed out “Photography is the only art that can still afford to be naturalistic and that, in fact, achieves its maximum effect through naturalism….Therefore it would seem that photography today could take over the field that used to belong to genre and historical painting” Just as painting, once freed from its responsibility to accurately reflect the world, expanded into impressionism and abstraction, so to have traditional photographic processes expanded their repertoire of image making styles once no longer responsible for naturalism or historical account.  As with painting, we are seeing photography redeploy traditional techniques to create new and unique images that are no longer tied to reflecting the world. Instead of reflecting the world photography is now free to explore the lines, texture, and color of the medium isolated from content, much as the abstract painters did with painting. Artists like Hiroshi Sugimoto, Gerhard Richter, Dirk Braeckman, Marco Breuer, Chris Mccaw, Sally Mann, Alan Jarai are reinventing photography as a method of abstraction.  Sugimoto, like Rothko, is exploring the color field and raw horizon line. Chris Mccaw, Mann, Braeckman and Breuer are all exploring the texture of the negative and print surface.

Clement Greenburg outlines the hallmarks of abstract expressionism as “large and conspicuous rhythms, broken color, uneven saturations, exhibited finger marks, masses that blot and fuse”, the work here presented is an attempt to recreate these elements but with photographic processes rather than paint. It is a rediscovery of the elements of photography as they can be employed toward an abstract expressionist end. This work was inspired by Ralph Eugene Meatyard’s abstractions (1957-1972). It was with these images that photography was reborn as an abstract medium. These electromagnetograms use some of the same methods Meatyard introduced and expand on his process. These works are an effort to explore the essence of the medium, independent of content, in the same way that abstract expressionism was an effort at exploring the essence of painting free of content. The electromagnetogram is an effort at isolating light, surface, saturation, and rhythm in through the photographic process.