Brian Bishop - Artist Statement

The principle interest of my studio practice is the exploration of the fine line between the forgotten or overlooked moment and the fetishized memory as simultaneously seen through the filters of portraiture in the west, snapshot photography and the contemporary cultural phenomenon of constant surveillance. Inevitably it also addresses memory, as it is known through photography, and questions if these moments represent truth or fiction.

Through this work I mine the landscape of the common, the mundane, the banal, and the fragmented as they are presented in the context of notation, documentation and memory. It navigates the intersection of the overabundant surveyed image and the poignancy of the intimate vignette or home movie. Implied narratives and contexts are generated on the margins, between the images and outside the frame. The resulting images appear disjunctive and out-of-context, alluding to the “lost” images on a roll of film, the in-between moments and the “throwaway” image - the mistake.

My work is in part an attempt to pinpoint a locus between the intangible and the material, the intellectual and the tactile. To paraphrase Jonathon Lasker painting is such a vital medium due its dialectical capacity to engage a mediated image or illusion and present it in an actualized experience. It is able to achieve such a synthesis because in viewing the painting the audience is confronted with the material and artifice of the construction of the object - they unavoidably have to reckon with the indexical quality of the image while reconciling it. In this manner I am not presenting a mere (re)presentation of the moment, but by making it into a painting, a physical object, I render the fleeting moment concrete.

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Exhibitions

• 2006 Outwin Boochever Portraiture Exhibition, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washnigton, DC

• 2006 Pink Days, Azure Nights, Dalton Gallery, Agnes Scott College, Atlanta, GA

• 2005 Information in Formation, Visual Arts Gallery, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL

• 2005 A Link To The Past: Contemporary Artists Inspired by the Renaissance, Museum of Arts & Sciences, Macon, GA

• 2005 Drawing: New Directions, Elon University, Elon, NC

• 2004 Seventh Annual SECAC Members' Exhibition, Jacksonville Museum of Modern Art, Jacksonville, FL

• 2004 Limit Edge Boundary Asymptote: The Fine Lines of Human Space, City Without Walls, Newark, NJ

• 2004 Focus/Alabama, Space 301, Mobile, AL

• 2004 Encaustic Works 2003: Fourth International Juried Biennial, Marist College Art Gallery, Poughkeepsie, NY -juried by Tracey Brashkoff, Associate Curator, John Solomon Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY

• 2003 Drawing Upon Structure, Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Wilmington, DE

• 2003 School's Out: Emerging Artists from the Southeast, City Art Gallery, Columbia, SC

• 2003 Switchyard, Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville, TN

• 2003 Brian Bishop, Ashley Oates, Kelly Popoff, Southside Gallery, Oxford, MS

• 2003 Bi-State Art Exhibition, Meridian Museum of Art, Meridian, MS - Merit Award

• 2003 Body, Musawwir Art Space, Midland Park, NJ

• 2002 Working Drawings, Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art, Greensboro, NC

• 2001 August Art, Rawspace, New York, NY

• 1999 Homegrown, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), Winston-Salem, NC

• 1999 Recent Work by Gallery Artists, Gallery 111, Johannesburg, Gauteng, Republic of South Africa

• 1999 Five Alive, Elon University, Elon, NC

• 1998 Will?, Old Dominion University, University Gallery, Norfolk, VA

• 1998 Restart: Gallery 111, Johannesburg, Gauteng, Republic of South Africa

• 1998 Vital Signs: Drawing as Inquiry, juried by Robert Reed, Creative Arts Workshop, New Haven,CT - Grand Prize

• 1998 TECHnology, NATO Conference, Webb Center, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA

• 1998 Price is Right, Ledbetter Lusk Gallery, Memphis, TN

• 1998 MAX ‘99, curated by Buzz Spector, Art Museum of The University of Memphis, Memphis, TN

• 1998 Shake: Benefit for Delta Axis Contemporary Arts Center, First Tennessee Bank Headquarters, Memphis, TN

• 1997 Infusion, Herman Miller Design, Farmington Hills, MI

• 1997 Arts in the Park - Then and Now: Tenth Anniversary Exhibit, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN

• 1997 Drive - By Art: Art in a Ryder Truck, sponsored by Delta Axis and Marshall Arts, Memphis, TN

• 1997 Memphis Arts Council Invitational, Memphis College of Art Gallery, Memphis, TN

• 1997 Generations, Marshall Arts, Memphis, TN

• 1996 Cut Across the Middle, Alternate Current ArtSpace, Austin, TX

• 1996 Phase Four, Network Gallery, Pontiac, MI

• 1996 Swap, Marshall Arts, Memphis, TN

• 1994 Cut Across the Middle, Neo-Post-Now Gallery, Manitiwoc, WI

• 1992 Close (Non) Proximity, two-person exhibition, Itawamba Community College, Fulton, MS

• 1992 39th Annual Delta Exhibition, juried by Robert Stackhouse, Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR

• 1992 Memphis Arts Festival Invitational Exhibition, Arts In The Park, Memphis, TN

• 1992 Introductions: II, Cooper Street Gallery

Awards

Collections