Artist Talk: Juan Fernandez

Saturday, Sep 21, 2019 2:30 – 3:30 pm

Free

Location: The Cliff Dwellers Club, 200 South Michigan Avenue


Join Juan Fernandez for a discussion of his project Façade, currently on view at The Cliff Dwellers Club.  Façade is a photographic project that concentrates on vernacular architecture e.g. schools, housing, industrial, retail buildings. Photographs of suburban architecture operate with a sense of familiarity, illustrating seemingly banal moments, however, upon further inspection, certain oddities begin to rise to the surface. The peculiarities are metaphors for uneasiness, rejection, and isolation that exist as odd photographic moments within a landscape of form, structure, and order.

Visual oddities are accomplished by using the innate qualities of the photographic process, coupled with varying amounts of digital manipulation. Specifically, each image is “cleansed” of visual distractions. Fernandez uses the perception of structure, form, and order to guide the viewer through the banality of vernacular architecture. However, when closely investigated, the images speak to complex ideas of authenticity and identity.

Juan Fernandez is an artist based in Elgin, IL. He is currently the Gallery Curator for Elgin Community College as well as an art educator who has taught at Northern Illinois University, Waubonsee Community College, Grand Rapids Community College, Judson University, and Elgin Community College. His work references the perceptions of form, structure, and order in common materials and subject matter. His photographs are in the collection of Columbia College Chicago, the Rockford Art Museum, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, and in The Midwest Photographers Project at The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, IL.

Fernandez has also exhibited in numerous national and international exhibitions including at Catherine Edelman Gallery, Rockford Art Museum, Boecker Contemporary in Heidelberg, Germany, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, the Griffin Museum of Photography, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, Angelika Studios in Buckinghamshire, England, and The Houston Center for Photography.

 

Hosted by: The Cliff Dwellers