KATE PETLEY: Von Lintel Gallery is delighted to announce Chances Are, its second solo exhibition of abstract artist Kate Petley, who we are thrilled to confirm will be in attendance at the opening on March 12. Petley’s debut at Von Lintel came at a time of great global change in 2020: a fitting coincidence given the theme of transformation is integral to her work. Her image-making process involves assembling sculptures from quotidian materials – cardboard, tape, paper, film and “stuff out of the trash” – before selectively applying paint to these makeshift objects. They are then photographed, with Petley manipulating lighting, scale, and layers of colored gels until she achieves her desired effect. The subsequent images defy description. Elevated to mythical proportions, her sculptural forms become luminous topographies: distinct from and obscured by overlapping geometries and finely gradated fields of color. To use University of Colorado Art Museum Director Sandra Firmin’s description, her photographs “mesmerize”, and this impression is heightened when Petley opts to print them onto canvas. Her rationale for doing so is multiple. Not only does it blur the categorical boundaries between sculpture, photography and painting – canvas being the substrate on which the latter is produced and exhibited – but the enhanced scale of this irreconcilable imagery favors an emotional and physical reaction that circumvents logic. Petley continues to knit the qualities of these disciplines together by adding brushstrokes of acrylic directly to the canvas, further jostling our perception between the two-dimensional surface and the photograph’s illusion of depth. The end result is the overwhelming achievement of her aim to “create images that affect our deepest level of vision”: re-awakening our sense of sight in an Insta-obsessed, image-saturated world. ACCRA SHEPP: Von Lintel Gallery is pleased to present Accra Shepp’s Folium Pictum series. His incredible photographic portraits were initially exhibited at the height of Covid and nationwide lockdowns in early 2021. Consequently, we are delighted to offer visitors the opportunity to see a selection of this work again, which will be on display in our Project Room. Shepp has developed a unique process in his photography-based practice over the years, a captivating transformation of preserved tobacco and certain mammoth indigenous leaves into photoreactive materials. Onto these tanned, veined, physically huge but texturally fragile surfaces, Shepp enacts photographic portraits of the laborers who work these crops and farmlands. By grafting their images in such a physically integrated way, the image seems to emerge from within the leaf. Shepp has stated that, “Tobacco has a long and complicated history from its cultivation through slave labor at the founding of this country to its modern cultivation with the use of migrant labor. I wanted to see where tobacco comes from and who grows it.” So, he went on a road trip to investigate. After encountering some initial resistance, the images in this series were made on farms in Kentucky and Georgia, and in Indonesia. The portraits of the farmers and the farm workers (an almost entirely immigrant-based labor force) are life size and are printed on the (surprisingly large) tobacco leaves that they themselves grew. Shepp will show a selection of such works made in recent years, silver gelatin emulsions on leaf, which are then mounted on paper. An earthen palette and leathery, autumnal and ritualistic aura give each piece the singular presence of a rare, painterly object. There is an evocative, elusive, emotional energy that radiates from their material mysteriousness. At the same time, being part of larger research and socio-economic critique, the pictures embody journalistic documentation, individual narratives, and a centering of disremembered history. A majestic tableaux work, Castle Portrait depicts a related scenario in an imposing black and white photograph of an often-plundered manor house’s great hall still containing a few ragtag family portraits. A mural-size image of this haunted interior is flanked by four leaf-printed portraits of its remaining residents. The juxtapositions between grandeur and entropy, romanticism and ruination resonate with the laborer and the agricultural leaf works in that in a very real sense this cumbersome house is their land, and their symbolic, difficult work is cultivating its living history.