Philip Martin Gallery is proud to present a solo exhibition of new large-format photographs by Michael Wesik. Michael Wesik's photographs take on our profound relationship with nature.
Like any great landscape artist, Michael Wesik situates the viewer squarely in the landscape - a place larger than himself, full of color, movement, drama and subtlety. Wesik places his viewer in the landscape by virtue of placing himself in that landscape first. He leaves his studio in the rugged and wild Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, carrying a massive, hooded, ultra-large format camera into the Canadian "bush" - a place of tremendous visual authority and complexity.
In some sense in his work, Michael Wesik enacts the 200-year history of photography in North America and that of land art, in particular. Land art opened up artistic practice as a means by which to consider how we use the land and that land is a 'site' for artistic action. Land art adapted sculpture, conceptualism and performance. "My approach to the medium is photography as performance and landscape as expression," Wesik notes, going on to point out that, "The analogue medium requires physical processes that are fundamentally performative. In conceptualizing any photographic composition, my first and most important consideration is how best to record that subject as an interplay of shapes, marks, and textures, which I generate through precise manipulations of camera movements in conjunction with exposure methodologies such as multiple exposures, long exposures, etc."
A key aspect of Michael Wesik's practice is that he uses black and white and color negative film, respectively and exclusively, to make his work. "The analogue approach is a delicate and calculated dance of balancing variables in camera, on film, and within the darkroom," he says. It is a not a simple or neutral process. "Choosing a film type is akin to choosing a material and tool combined; ie. it is both canvas and instrument. Color negative film, for example, registers light in an organic way specific to the imbedded characteristics of that film type. But no matter the choice in film, all photographs require correction in color, contrast, and density. Negatives are sketches. The idea of photographs being representational of what we visually perceived is a paradigmatic holdover from photographs being a record of ‘real’. The expressive potential of the medium, and in the use of film particularly, has far more expressive capacity.”
Wesik's photographs are shot on location in the massive forest lands of Canada's Pacific Coast at a time of environmental and human change. What is our relation and responsibility to a world that is bigger than any one individual, yet susceptible to the activities of human at large? "Philosophically," Wesik suggests, "this is where I find so much alignment with Caspar David Friedrich and the conceptual sublime. There’s a palpable synergy there for me. When people are looking at my work, they’re presented with a window into my deep connection to this specific landscape and into my obsessive relationship with analog photography; the interaction of which becomes the material externalization of my internal world."
Michael Wesik's exhibition is online June 28 - July 12, 2023.
Philip Martin Gallery is open Wednesday - Saturday 11-5 and Tuesdays by appointment. If you might like to visit the gallery on a Tuesday, please email info@philipmartingallery.com, or call (323)-507-2037, as it is likely we can accommodate your visit.
The gallery is located at 3342 Verdugo Road, Los Angeles CA 90065. For additional images or information, please call 323-507-2037, or email info@philipmartingallery.com.