Jon Verney: Solfatara, Photography Exhibition Opens at Adrian College
Image : Jon Verney, Solfatara detail
Valade Gallery at Adrian College announces the opening of Solfatara, a solo exhibition of new work by Jon Verney. The show is on display and open to the public through October 25th, with an opening reception on Tuesday, September 26th from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. Verney will deliver an artist talk at 6 pm.
Solfatara explores notions of flux, transformation, and transcendence through an engagement with landscape and materiality. The core of Verney’s current work is Thermophile, an ongoing project that explores the possibilities of chemically-altering gelatin silver prints in geothermal springs around the world. By carefully immersing silver-based photos into volcanic hot springs and mud pots, Verney coaxes their imagery through a chaotic transformation; iron, sulfur, copper, aluminum - the atoms of dissolved elements in the waters - bond to the silver in the photographs’ emulsions, fusing and forming new compounds. This mineral abundance, paired with the springs’ acidity and high temperatures, causes each photograph to be redeveloped, altered, and transmuted in a unique manner—no two ever appearing the same. In a parallel studio process, Verney immerses found polaroids into hot water, causing their aged emulsions to steadily unfurl from their acetate bases. Marred by myriad dendritic fractures, the photographs appear to collapse in on themselves, rendering the relative banality of the snapshots into metamorphic abstractions. Some traces of the original imagery remain, connoting an entropic sense of loss and erosion, offering a quiet meditation on the titanic natural forces that shape our world.
Jon Verney is a visual artist working in painting, photography, and video. After earning his BFA in Painting from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2010, he traveled to Florence, Italy, where he worked for three years at Studio Art Center International. Upon returning to the United States, Verney received his MFA from the Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan in 2016. During his studies, he received numerous grants to fund his creative research, which included fieldwork in Iceland, the Yellowstone Caldera, and California’s Salton Sea. Verney’s work has been featured on lenscratch.com, and he was a recent artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center. This fall, Verney will serve as a visiting artist at Hiram College in Ohio, and perform at PVDLoop at AS220 in Providence, Rhode Island. In November, Verney will travel to Finland to participate in an international symposium on painting at the University of Arts, Helsinki. Verney’s studio practice is currently based in Massachusetts.
Valade Gallery is located in the rear of Shipman Library, on Williams Street on the Adrian College Campus. Free street parking is available. Gallery open hours are Monday through Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm, with extended hours on Tuesday until 7 pm.
Contact: Elspeth Schulze, Gallery Director : gallery@adrian.edu
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