Photographs by Maury Gortemiller on View at Staniar Gallery
Songs and Wars and Wolves: Recent Photographs by Washington and Lee University Visiting Professor of Art Maury Gortemiller will be on view in Wilson Hall from Jan. 9 – Feb. 4.
The exhibit features works from two series of color photographs. Both projects explore the medium’s unique capability to simultaneously communicate and obfuscate, shifting in relation to the viewing context and artist’s intentions.
In All-Time Lotion, Gortemiller builds upon critic Robert Storr’s ideas surrounding the estrangement of the photograph. The artist seeks to “maintain the semblance of ordinary, everyday things while investigating their latent conceptual meanings.”
In the second series, Gortemiller examines cassette singles, which might first appear to be mundane objects made obsolete with the advent of CDs. Instead, he engages with these cultural artifacts to explore what he refers to as “the overtly macho and androgynous facets of masculinity.”
His work has been exhibited at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York City, Reese Museum in Johnson City, Tenn., Lyceum Theater in San Diego, Calif., as well as select galleries throughout the southeast. Gortemiller’s photographs have been published in Kinki Mag, the Collector’s Guide to New Art Photography, Oxford American magazine and featured in many on-line publications including The Appalachian Photographer’s Project, The 50 States Project and Conscientious.
Gortemiller earned his M.F.A. in photography from the University of Georgia and also holds an M.A. in Southern Studies from University of Mississippi. For the 2011-12 academic year, Gortemiller is teaching all levels of photography in the Art Department at Washington and Lee.
Gortemiller will give an artist’s talk on Thursday, Jan. 19, at 5:30 p.m. in Wilson Hall 2018. The lecture will be followed by a reception in Lykes Atrium. Both events are free and open to the public. Lykes Atrium is located on the second floor of Wilson Hall, in Washington and Lee University’s Lenfest Center for the Arts.
The exhibit is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, please call 540-458-8861.
News Contact:
Julie Cline
News Writer
jcline@wlu.edu
540-458-8954
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