Wait-a-While: Jessica Sladek

Reception: Friday, October 26th 5:00pm – 7:30pm

Schneider Gallery is pleased to host Wait-a-While, an exhibition of new works by Jessica Sladek.

Jessica Sladek's work is guided by a desire to envision our environment without idealization. In this brand new body of work, Sladek's large-scale photographs capture Australia's Daintree Rainforest. Sladek's work invites the viewer to become entangled in a lush, sometimes terrifying, and complicated realm where one may pause, wait, and see what emerges.

Wait-a-While is named for a vine integral to the Daintree Rainforest that acts to stitch the forest together. When caught in its sharp, hooked spines, one must stop, and wait a while in order to untangle themselves. Wait-a-While also refers to Sladek's slow creative process while making photographs, and the laborious time spent in post-production. The works utilize scale and detail to create a subtle sense of physical immersion and encourage prolonged observation.

Jessica Sladek (American, b. 1981) is a photographic artist based in Chicago, IL whose work explores human relationship and experience with the natural world, and the ways we represent nature in landscape. Sladek earned her MFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago in 2017, an Associate Degree in commercial photography from Harrington College of Design in 2006, and a Bachelor of Liberal Arts Degree from Carthage College in 2003. She received the Stuart Abelson Fellowship in 2017, and is the current Artist Fellow at the Arts Club of Chicago.

Image: Jessica Sladek, "Jidalba" 2017