Roe Ethridge: New Photographs

ROE ETHRIDGE

June 5^th - July 3^rd, 2003

Shaheen Modern and Contemporary Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of new photographs by New York based photographer Roe Ethridge.  In the wake of highly successful and critically lauded one-person gallery exhibitions in New York and London, this will be Ethridge's first one-person gallery exhibition in the mid-west, and he will be traveling to Cleveland for the occasion.  There will be an opening reception for the artist on Thursday, June 5^th, from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m.  The exhibition will continue through July 3rd. 

Over the past few years, Roe Ethridge has forged a reputation for himself among museum curators, collectors and critics as one of the most exciting and accomplished young photographers working today.  Ethridge's subtly compelling color photographs integrate and balance a sophisticated knowledge of photography's history with a uniquely contemporary visual sensibility ( -- one that is at least partially conditioned by his experience as a successful commercial photographer).  The eclectic, yet strangely coherent body of imagery that the artist has produced over the past five years is marked by a (Jasper) Johnsian attraction to and penchant for re-framing those ubiquitous elements of everyday visual experience that are often looked at, yet seldom seen.  Over the past three years, Ethridge's photographs have appeared in major museum exhibitions at the P.S. 1 Museum, New York; The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; and The Barbican Gallery, London. 

In addition to the photographs of Roe Ethridge, we will be exhibiting recent paintings by Kent, Ohio based painter Neil MacDonald.  Since late 1999, the majority of MacDonald's eerily beautiful, softly focused representational paintings have depicted images related to specific airline disasters from the 1980's and 1990's.  According to the artist, "the paintings do not contain images of graphic explosions or violent death.  The images presented are those that take place on the periphery of a tragic event."  Working primarily from his own photographs of found video footage, the artist translates his carefully selected images to canvas/linen via a meticulous and somewhat systemic painting process that involves the methodical deconstruction and reconstruction of original source material.  Neither sentimental nor nihilistic, the resulting works depict an otherwise traditional landscape marked by the eerily calm aftermath of mechanical failure and human error.