LUX: The Radiant Sea
July 14 – August 19, 2016
Matthew Lopez-Jensen’s work explores the way in which people experience and interact with the landscape. Each of his projects involves walking, extended observation, and site-specific exploration, particularly of public spaces. Taking into account the impact of technology on our understanding of space, Jensen engages with both physical and virtual landscapes. His final works often combine photography, installation and participatory action.
In the series The 49 States, Lopez-Jensen plays with the history of landscape photography, utilizing Google Street View to conduct a virtual road trip of America. Choosing one image per state, and using only those in which the sun is shining directly into the camera, the resulting characterization of small town America signals a new understanding of landscape, which can be explored through the screen of a computer.
In a number of recent projects, Lopez-Jensen has created and distributed maps and conducted guided walks in order to extend the viewer’s experience beyond the walls of the gallery. In the exhibition The Wilmington Center for the Study of Local Landscape (2013), Lopez-Jensen incorporated community participation, as participants contributed their own responses to the parks in the area, while also featuring discoveries made by the artist throughout the Wilmington park system.
Born in 1980 in Connecticut, Matthew LopezJensen lives and works in New York. He received a BFA in political science and fine arts from Rice University, and a MFA in photography from the University of Connecticut. He is a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2016 grant recipient of the Peter S. Reed Foundation, and he completed a MacDowell Fellowship in 2011. Lopez-Jensen’s work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., among others. He is a part-time Assistant Professor of photography and studio art at Parsons/The New School, where he has taught since 2012. He has also held teaching positions at SUNY Purchase, George Washington University and the University of Connecticut.
September 1, 2018 – January 5, 2020
Constructing Identity in America
This permanent collection show of more than 80 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper will address a variety of characteristics that contribute to one’s sense of self, including civic, cultural, artistic, religious, professional, and sociopolitical identities, sense of place and personal space, and non-conformity. Portraits range from Charles Wilson Peale’s Portrait of George Washington (1783) to John Singer Sargent’s Ernest-Ange Duez (1884), Alice Neel’s Isabel Bishop (1974) and Catherine Opie’s Jo (1993). Works addressing the impact of geography upon identity include those of Matthew Jensen, Abelardo Morrell, and Dennis Oppenheim, while defining moments of social activism appear in works by Juan Sanchez, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Jack Whitten, and Mel Edwards. The exhibition is curated by Gail Stavitsky, MAM chief curator.
Congratulations to Matthew Jensen on his 2016 Fellowship
Light and landscape combine as metaphor in numerous works by Jensen. In 2009 the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired his photographic series The 49 States and exhibited it in After Photoshop: Manipulated Photography in the Digital Age (2012). The photographs were derived from months of exploring small towns in the early days of Google Streetview. The series is also in the collection of the National Gallery of Art where it was also exhibited (2016). Other works likeThe Sun Returning, 14 Hour Sunset and Rainbow Around the Sun were exhibited together at Yancey Richardson Gallery as part of Jensen's solo show Feels Like Real (2015).
This exhibition will highlight a selection of photographs donated in honor of the 25th anniversary of the National Gallery's photography's collection. Marking the culmination of a year-long celebration of photography at the museum, this installation brings together an exquisite group of gifts, ranging from innovative photographs made in the earliest years of the medium's history to key works by important 20th-century artists and contemporary pieces that examine the ways in which photography continues to shape our experience of the modern world.
