ASHES/ASHES is pleased to announce REVIVER, a group exhibition of Yale University’s MFA Photography 2016 Graduates. Curated by International Center of Photography Curator-in-Residence, Charlotte Cotton, the exhibition will be on view August 13th–August 27th, with an opening reception on Saturday, August 13th from 7-9pm.
Grouped together under the title REVIVER, the artists engage with formal photographic practice while trying to find a place in a world of ever-proliferating images. Cotton says of the exhibition, “I’m struck by the singularity of the choice of the title—a word that contains and embodies their shared aims for the ongoing exploration of photographic thinking.”
REVIVER presents 10 photographers whose work varies from Sara Cwynar’s experimental appropriations on the interactions of body and object to Monique Atherton’s observations about portraiture’s potential futures. Black-and-white photography is seen freshly through the enchantingly ambiguous narratives posted in the images of Eli Durst and the graphic compositions of Drew Brown. John Edmonds’ installation invites the viewer to consider what portraiture misses through its repetition, while simultaneously evoking discourse around race and gender. 
Ye Weon Mary Kim incorporates traditional forms of painting and digital collage into her photographic narratives, complicating the tropes of landscape photography. Robin Myers’ surrealist photographs reexamine traditional notions of the bodily form while Cole Don Kelley, Adam Pape, and Eva O’Leary use the associative powers of color to create arrestingly intimate images of what are often considered commonplace subjects.
Over the course of two years, working in close proximity to one another, each artist has emerged with a distinctive voice and a shared goal of pushing the medium further into the future while keeping in mind its historical past. It is in exhibitions like REVIVER that the viewer gets to see what is happening on the ground level of contemporary photography while looking out for the work that will foretell its path.
On view in LA/DW~PS is Derek Corns’ IWKIMV (2016).