Matthew Jensen: There From Here
June 13-July 21, 2018
Opening Reception: June 13, 7-9pm
LOW WALK HIGH WALK: June 16, 1-3pm
Open Source will be closed July 4-7.
Open Source Gallery presents There from Here: A Collection of Brooklyn Walks, a solo exhibition by Matthew Jensen curated by Ian Cofre.
Matthew Jensen, who lived for years in South Slope, Brooklyn, has created numerous works that explore landscapes across the borough, including Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Prospect Park, Barren Island, and—most recently—Green-Wood Cemetery. A photographer by training, Jensen is a contemporary landscape artist who often combines image-making with installation and participatory action to investigate the ways through which people experience and interact with both physical and virtual landscapes. Each of his projects involves walking, extended observation, and site-specific exploration, particularly of public spaces, which results in an approach akin to an urban archaeology. With this cultural practice, the artist generates photographs, videos, maps, sculptural installations, and collections of materials and debris that upon closer inspection define and abstract notions of everyday space.
There from Here is both a survey of Jensen’s past Brooklyn-based works and a compendium of the walking maps, which—in the open source spirit—are available for audience members to take away. The maps are photographic objects as well as detailed guides to the artist’s walking practice, revealing forgotten histories, invisible remnants, and encounters with the surrounding natural world, which can be undertaken by anyone, individually or collectively. It’s this inversion of the hierarchies of seeing, where the artist privileges the act of looking down, closely, without an intervening screen, that feels like a vital political gesture today.
In addition to these works, on Saturday, June 16, Jensen will lead LOW WALK HIGH WALK through the neighborhood of South Slope, beginning and ending at Open Source, where participants will generate a collection of objects, ephemera and natural detritus, which will be arranged and exhibited back in the gallery in a new collaborative installation.
Matthew Jensen (b. 1980, Connecticut) received a BFA in political science and fine arts from Rice University, and a MFA in photography from the University of Connecticut. He is a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2016 grant recipient of the Peter S. Reed Foundation, and he completed a MacDowell Fellowship in 2011. Jensen’s work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., among others. He is a part-time Assistant Professor of photography and studio art at Parsons/The New School, where he has taught since 2012. He has also held teaching positions at SUNY Purchase, George Washington University and the University of Connecticut. Jensen now lives and works in the Bronx.
Ian Cofre is an independent curator, writer, and translator based in Brooklyn, NY. His writings appear in the Brooklyn Rail, artcritical, and Arte al Día, and he recently contributed an essay for the catalog, Wanderlust: Actions, Traces, Journeys 1967-2017. Profiles and reviews of exhibitions he has curated can be found in The Art Newspaper, Arte al Día International, The Wall Street Journal, and Billedkunst, among other publications. Currently, he is working with Dr. Eva Giloi on an exhibition cycle in Newark, NJ titled Newark Rhythms to take place in 2018-19.
Matthew Jensen: There From Here | Press Release | Installation View | LOW WALK HIGH WALK
