Amos Eno Gallery presents Vice Versa, an exhibition of recent photographic collage works by Cynthia Laureen Vogt which are meditations on the abstract mechanics of language, the body, and rhythm. An opening reception will be held on Friday, May 5 from 6-8 PM on the lower level of 56 Bogart Street in Brooklyn, NY.
These intimate collages are dominated by paper cut-outs and photographs of wooden block letters, their three-dimensional appearance aligning the phonetic symbols with their relationship to the human body. Their sense of depth, furthered by the strata of media as well as the accordion-fold book forms into which they are sewn, is drawn into contrast by cutting both around and against the characters and by silhouetted human figures whose gestures recurringly perform as text. This cutting additionally acts to unify letters and figures with the surfaces on which they are printed, text and support becoming interchangeable.
Vogt uses the book form as a site for the gathering and dispersion of signs, where time, absence, and movement are communicated through the photographic trace of figures or letters on layered surfaces - and vice versa: graphic symbols and anatomies are signified through cut-away absences. The collage elements in themselves become a meta-language of linguistic signs; representations of the very text, paper, or support over which they are layered, occasionally verso-side out. Intermittent use of acetate transparencies produce subtle reflections and shadows that shift and change relative to the viewer’s position. Communication is never still; it’s a process, a function of time as well as the body.
Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Cynthia Laureen Vogt lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She received her MFA from the University of Arizona, where she has also taught photography as well as conducted classes with the Tucson Arts Museum. She has exhibited her photography and artist’s books for over thirty years at venues both in the United States and abroad, including the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, and the Nippon Polaroid Center in Japan. Vogt was recently interviewed for the Descent of Man website by L.E. Brown and has published a photographic essay as part of Woody Vasulka’s The Brotherhood. Her work has been reviewed in such publications as THE Magazine and Nippon Camera, and is included in numerous private and public collections. Amos Eno Gallery is a registered 501(c)3 non profit exhibition space founded in 1974.