Ambient Occlusion

Sonya Blesofsky

Clive Murphy

Zachary Norman

Present Company is proud to inaugurate its 2016-17 exhibition season with the opening of Ambient Occlusion, a three-person show featuring new work.

In the virtual realm, Ambient Occlusion is a method of orchestrating artificial light exposure, and the subsequent shadow details, on objects relative to one another in a shared environment. Its usage, perhaps an act of subtle deception, propels an otherwise imagined situation towards a prosthetic surrogate of reality. When properly employed, this process embraces a psychological instability that fades the borders of perception, illusion and reality.

Through subtractive disruption and aggregate counterbalancing, a notional process of artistic collaboration reconsiders and questions the authenticity and limitations of the constructed exhibition space. If the works are the light, then the viewer is the shadow—each one needing one another to verify their existence. And, if the controlled and antiseptic exhibition space is the main stage for contemporary art, how can artworks communicate reality?

Although constructed, Present Co. only exists through dialogue and interaction, much like a community theater production—raw, quirky, intimate and unfiltered. With humble means and by employing numerous handcrafted strategies, this stage can enable the temporary suspension of disbelief in order to reinforce a shared experience. In similar fashion, the artists in Ambient Occlusion purport reality in order to create a holistic context for visual engagement.

Sonya Blesofsky considers how architecture indirectly impacts the psychological and somatic experience of its residents. With a focus on the urban environment—its overlapping placement and displacement—the artist re-traces the seldom noted and continuously discarded history of changing neighborhoods. Her newest, site-specific intervention unearths the vestiges of the exhibition site’s industrial past.

Taken from his wide range of sculptural configurations that remix and shuffle cultural ephemera, Clive Murphy presents a suite of three site-specific columns fashioned from found objects and appropriated bits of debris. These human-scaled monuments memorialize notions of idealized function while underscoring the precarious value of mass-produced goods and products.

Zachary Norman's computer-generated photographs explore the crags and cracks of the uncanny valley. His images present virtually conceived bodily forms and objects whose pristine surfaces belie their inherent fabricated nature. Norman’s composite figures and tableaus lead the viewer through unearthly narratives that explore the relationship between empathy, perception and visual ploy.

Sonya Blesofsky received her MFA in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute and BA from UC Santa Cruz. Her work has been featured in national and New York-based exhibitions including gallery shows at Mixed Greens, Smack Mellon, Islip Art Museum and Plane Space. Blesofsky has participated in numerous prestigious residencies such as Urban Glass, the Lower East Side Printshop, Museum of Arts and Design, CUE Art Foundation, Smack Mellon, Dieu Donne, LMCC’s Workspace:120 Broadway, and the California Legion of Honor. Prior to her participation in Ambient Occlusion, Blesofsky just returned from a summer residency at KKV Print Shop in Malmö Sweden–a partnership with the Women’s Studio Workshop. Born in Boston and raised in California, she currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Clive Murphy received his BA and MFA from University of Ulster, Belfast. His work has been shown in recent exhibitions including, House of Cards at Van Horn Gallery, Dusseldorf; Good Things Come... at Plymouth College of Art, England; Two Machines at Knockdown Center, Brooklyn; The Viewing Room at GCA, Brooklyn and Demonic Interventions with Ikea Furniture, a collaboration with Aengus Woods at Rawson Projects, New York. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and residencies including a Jerome Fellowship, LMCC Workspace, Franconia Residency and a residency at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Born in Ireland, the artist currently resides and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Zachary Norman received his BA from Kalamazoo College and an MFA in Photography from Indiana University. Norman is the co-founder of the art collective EIC, whose work has been featured in several solo and group shows and published extensively. In 2016, their publication Deliberate Operations 3 was shortlisted for the Anamorphosis Prize and included in the Museum of Modern Art Library. He is the co-recipient of a New Frontiers Grant for his research on computational photography. His work has been featured at Chicago Expo, Aperture Foundation, New York; Kilroy Metal Ceiling, New York; Filter, Chicago; Royal Nonesuch Gallery, Oakland; Webber Gallery Space, London and Steinsland Berliner Gallery, Stockholm. Norman is currently a Visiting Lecturer at University of Notre Dame.