Colleen Keihm & Nicole Mauser: Break Here

Filter Photo is pleased to present Break Here, a two-person exhibition featuring the work of Colleen Keihm and Nicole Mauser.

In this collaborative two-person exhibition, Colleen Keihm and Nicole Mauser use photography, painting, collage, and installation to construct abstract disoriented spaces – making marks by removal and absence. The mechanical aspect of film photography by Keihm and exerted muscle memory embedded within painting by Mauser describe similar desires for control yet strategically leave openings in their process for unpredictability. These gaps become spaces for the viewer to inhabit. Physical cuts into material prioritize viewers’ engagement in perception so as to frame the act of looking as subject.

When creating the works, Keihm and Mauser play with forces of light to generate reflection, refraction, absorption and the inherent temporality before light begins escaping or completely erasing the image. Digital preservation efforts of scanning cause objects to advance and recede as graphic incisions ask the viewer to embrace desire and beauty with the in-between spaces. By creating portals or plans, they are constructing new ground to break. Look again, their structural principles and perceivable volume are intended to confuse.

Colleen Keihm believes that networked digital convenience continues to flatten our interface with the world while the chemical, mechanical, bendable photograph looks both more mundane and more enchanted. Her work uses photographic mediums to summarize points of life, create steady ground, and establish a controlled reflection of the future. Keihm received an MFA at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a BA in Photography at Drexel University. Her work has been exhibited at Roman Susan, Flasch Library, Woman Made Gallery, Gallery 400, and Arc Gallery in Chicago. Her work is present within the photography collection at the Art Institute of Chicago and recently she rephotographed sites of interest for the Rogers Park Historical Society. In addition to her art practice, Keihm is an instructor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Wilbur Wright College, and Triton College.

Nicole Mauser’s work investigates the tensions at play between material specificity and the speed at which images congeal within a language of abstraction. Mauser obtained an MFA from The University of Chicago in (2010) and BFA from Ringling College of Art and Design (2006). Work has been featured at Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Brooklyn); Reynolds Gallery (Richmond, VA); Carrie Secrist Gallery (Chicago); Missouri Western State University (St. Joseph); AR Gallery (Milan); and Centre pour l’Art et le Culture (Aix-en-Provence, France). Works have been featured in New American Paintings, The New York Times, and The Kansas City Star among others. Her writings have been published in Newcity, Art Practical, 8 1⁄2 x 11, and Bad at Sports Blog. Mauser is a recipient of a City of Chicago DCASE Individual Artist Grant and The University of Chicago Student Arts Council Student Grant for painting research in Berlin. Collaborative projects include co-founding the artist-run gallery PLUG Projects as well as KCPAC (Kansas City Plein Air Coaterie). Collections include The Alexander (Indianapolis) and The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park). She is currently a Lecturer at The University of Chicago.

Exhibition Dates: December 7, 2018 – January 5, 2019
Opening Reception: December 7, 6 – 9 pm
Artist Talk: December 15, 1 pm