VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston presents the exhibition Perspectives 168: Anna Krachey, Jessica Mallios, and Adam Schreiber.  Opening reception: Thursday, November 5, 6:30-9:00 p.m. Gallery walkthrough with the artists: Thursday, November 5, 6:30 p.m. On view November 06, 2009 – February 07, 2010.

Austin-based photographers Anna Krachey, Jessica Mallios, and Adam Schreiber are fascinated by the transformations that occur when the visible world passes through the camera’s lens. Capturing an image on film, they believe, is always an uncanny process because the photograph inevitably differs from what the artist perceived at the moment of its making. Using highly manipulable, large-format box cameras and a wide range of architectural, technological, and household subjects, they create images that acknowledge the mysterious slippages, distortions, and blendings of real and unreal inherent in photography. The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is pleased to present Perspectives 168: Anna Krachey, Jessica Mallios, and Adam Schreiber, the first museum exhibition for these artists.

Krachey, Mallios, and Schreiber—friends and colleagues who work independently but share interests and approaches—are aware that, because of the instantaneous nature of exposures and the architecture of cameras with origins in Renaissance camera obscuras, all photographs distort appearances as they record light reflected from three-dimensional objects on a flat surface. By employing unusual framing, extreme close-ups, and idiosyncratic points of view, the artists seek to remind us of the artificial, enigmatic nature of photographic images. “We’re more interested in how the medium of photography invents something than how it records something,” says Schreiber. Subtle disturbances of perception and cognition pervade the artists’ work. Likening their images to mirages, Krachey, Mallios, and Schreiber make photographs that evoke heightened or estranged versions of the visible world.

Anna Krachey concentrates on her domestic sphere, making images of oddball objects she purchases on eBay or finds in ignored corners of her house and neighborhood. Creating a homespun Surrealism, Krachey’s work is filled with arresting juxtapositions of places and things that suggest a personal hall of mirrors in which questions about intentionality and accident, play and seriousness, abound.

Jessica Mallios studies collisions of the natural and artificial. She records architectural junctures where simulations of natural forms meet mundane industrial surfaces, and where faux finishes designed to evoke emotional responses collide with cold functionalism. Mallios also stages tabletop experiments that poetically replicate many of the dynamics of the process of making photographic images.

Adam Schreiber draws much of his imagery and inspiration from the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, a library and museum dedicated to the humanities. There, he has photographed cultural artifacts ranging from the first known photograph taken in 1826 to a variety of other industrial and historical oddities.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Anna Krachey, born in 1979 in Nashua, New Hampshire, holds a B.S. in studio art from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, and an M.F.A. in studio art from The University of Texas at Austin.

Jessica Mallios was born in 1976 in Austin, Texas, and graduated from Pratt Institute, New York, with a B.F.A. in photography and from Bard College, Annandale on Hudson, New York, with an M.F.A. in photography.

Born in Milwaukee in 1976, Adam Schreiber received a B.F.A. from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, and an M.F.A. from The University of Texas at Austin.

Krachey, Mallios, and Schreiber have participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at galleries and alternative spaces in Texas and the United States. Perspectives 168 is the first in-depth survey of their work, and its accompanying catalogue is their first scholarly publication.

PUBLIC PROGRAMS
All the following events are free and open to the public, and take place at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston unless otherwise noted. Please check www.camh.org for additional programming and information.

Opening reception: Perspectives 168: Anna Krachey, Jessica Mallios, and Adam Schreiber
Thursday, November 5, 6:30-9:00 p.m.
6:30 PM: Gallery walkthrough with the exhibiting artists
7:00-9:00 PM: Opening reception

Perspectives Talk: Toby Kamps
Thursday, January 7, 6:30 p.m.
Join us for a gallery walkthrough of Perspectives 168 with Toby Kamps, exhibition curator and senior curator, CAMH.

Perspectives Talk: Kurt Mueller
Thursday, January 28, 6:30 p.m.
Kurt Mueller, Critical Studies Fellow, The Core Program at the Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, talks about Perspectives 168.

PUBLICATION
Perspectives 168: Anna Krachey, Jessica Mallios, and Adam Schreiber will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

Perspectives catalogues are made possible by a grant from The Brown Foundation, Inc.

EXHIBITION FUNDING AND SUPPORT
The Perspectives Series is made possible by major grants from Fayez Sarofim; The Studio, the young professionals group of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; and by donors to the Museum’s Perspectives Fund: Anonymous Fund at the Community Foundation of Abilene; Bright Star Productions Inc.; Heidi and David Gerger; Leslie and Mark Hull; Karol Kreymer and Robert J. Card, M.D.; Kerry Inman and Denby Auble; Belinda Phelps and Randy Howard; Leslie and Shannon Sasser in honor of Lynn Herbert; Sara Dodd-Spickelmier and Keith Spickelmier; and Laura and Rob Walls.

EDUCATION SUPPORT
The Museum receives support for its education programs from: M.D. Anderson Foundation; Baker Botts L.L.P.; Baker Hughes Foundation; Chevron U.S.A. Inc.; Louise D. Jamail; Marian and Speros Martel Foundation Endowment; Nordstrom, Inc.

Teen Council is supported by Baker Hughes Foundation and Baker Botts L.L.P.

GENERAL SUPPORT
The Museum’s operations and programs are made possible through the generosity of the Museum’s trustees, patrons, members and donors. The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston receives partial operating support from the Houston Endowment, Inc., the City of Houston through the Houston Museum District Association, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Texas Commission on the Arts.

Continental is the official airline of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.

CAMH MISSION
The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is an idea and a place shaped by the present moment. The Museum exemplifies the dynamic relationship between contemporary art and contemporary society through its exhibitions, public and educational programs, and publications. The CAMH provides the physical and intellectual framework essential to the presentation, interpretation, and advancement of contemporary art; it is a vibrant forum for artists and all audiences, and for critical, scholarly, and public discourse.

ALWAYS FRESH, ALWAYS FREE!

GENERAL INFORMATION
The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is located at 5216 Montrose Boulevard, at the corner of Montrose and Bissonnet, in the heart of Houston’s Museum District. Hours are Tuesday to Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Thursdays to 9:00 p.m., and Sundays noon to 5:00 p.m. Admission is always free. For more information, visit www.camh.org  or call (713) 284-8250.

Pictured:  Jessica Mallios, detail of Fin, 2008. Archival inkjet print. Courtesy the artist.