John Chiara, Horseshoe Ramp at Mississippi, 2015, from Mississippi series, Image on Ilfochrome paper

John Chiara, Horseshoe Ramp at Mississippi, 2015, from Mississippi series, Image on Ilfochrome paper, 50 x 54.5 inches (127 x 138.4 cm), unique photograph, Courtesy ROSEGALLERY & NextLevel Galerie

JOHN CHIARA, IN CAMERA: AMERICAN LANDSCAPES

Exhibition from Apr 7 to Jun 4, 2016 at NEXTLEVEL GALERIE, Los Angeles Fair & Paris Fair Exhibitor

8, rue Charlot, 75003 Paris
[email protected]
T +33 (0)1 44 54 90 88
www.nextlevelgalerie.com
Artist’s reception Thursday 7 April 2016, 6-8pm

NextLevel is pleased to announce John Chiara’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and for the first time in Europe.

San Francisco-based artist John Chiara pushes the boundaries of the photographic medium through his choice of process and the mastery of its possibilities. His approach is distinguished by its incredible physicality and recalls the early days of the medium when artists dealt with heavy, awkward equipment and endured long exposure and development times. Chiara’s giant cameras, which he designed and built himself, are transported to locations on a flatbed trailer to produce one-of-a-kind large-scale prints. The design of the cameras, which is much like daguerreotype box cameras, allows the artist to simultaneously shoot and perform his darkroom work while images are recorded directly onto oversized photosensitive paper (not film). This process, which Chiara first discovered as a student in 1999, invites anomalies in his final prints and adds to the mystery and lyricism of his pictures.