“History in RGB is an exploration of individual and collective history as viewed through multiple lenses. Representing images of history, popular culture, mythic folklore, landscapes, and creatures, History in RGB proposes alternatives to the systemic representations ordered by colonial narratives.

The installation consists of a series of wall-hung prints. A stack of tinted color filters (red, green, and blue) akin to lighting gels are available, through which gallery visitors can view the surrounding prints.

Each print is a juxtaposition of images that have been stripped of color, then re-assigned with the value of a specific color based on a “tropical” Pantone palette. The re-assignment of color is based on the value system set by red, green or blue. Viewing the print through one of the three filters, selected images become visible while simultaneously obscuring other elements. While the filters become tools for revelation and clarity for a monochromatic narrative, they also produce a mottled background by obfuscating the other narratives that exist on the same surface.”

Maria Dumlao works with combined media, including film, video, animation, sound, photography, embroidery and installation. Her work explores individual and collective history as mediated experience. Her work, History in RGB, combines images of history, popular culture, mythic folklore, landscapes, and creatures to propose alternatives to the systemic representations ordered by colonial narratives. Born in the Philippines, Maria immigrated to the US mainland, where she currently lives and works in the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape (Philadelphia area). She received a BA in Studio Art & Art History from Rutgers College and a MFA in Studio Art at Hunter College-CUNY. Maria's work has been exhibited, screened and performed in the US and internationally. Most recently she completed a commissioned installation for Auckland Museum and Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Aotearoa New Zealand, exhibited at Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, TCNJ Art Gallery, Pearlstein Gallery, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center and Michener Art Museum, and received the 2020 Leeway Transformation Award, 2022 Interlude Artist Residency and 2021 Velocity Fund. Upcoming exhibitions include a solo at Palmer Gallery in Poughkeepsie, NY and a 2-person exhibition at Past Present Projects in Philadelphia.

mariadumlao.com

“As a Cuban American artist, my first experience in Havana in 2017 was a momentous marker for me, and for my work. Initially, before traveling to Cuba, I took photographs with a medium format Mamiya RZ camera of popular Cuban American Miami bayside locations, such as: La Ermita de la Caridad, Crandon Park, “Los Pinitos” and “El Farito.” I then digitized and enlarged those 6mm x 7mm color film frames as negative images onto fabric. I brought these printed images on fabric with me to Havana and asked Cuban citizens along the shoreline to hold these banners, image upside-down, for a portrait. The original print on fabric was given to Cuban participants immediately after the photograph was created, as a keepsake.

Upon returning to the US, I printed those photographs as upside-down negatives, flipping the orientation and thus rendering the originally held image on fabric as a positive.

While in Cuba, I also took various photographs along the shoreline in Havana with the Mamiya and enlarged those images as negative prints on fabric and continued the “Between” project in Miami bringing it full circle by engaging Cuban Americans as participants.

This series reflects issues related to perception, distance, dislocation, communication and inversion. This project explores various topics which are deeply personal to me, including the increased fluidity of relations and increased conversation between both Cubano populations- those within the island and those who have immigrated abroad. The banner held by participants along both shorelines can represent various possibilities: a peace offering, a surrender flag or an SOS signal.”

Gabriel Martinez is a photo-based multidisciplinary artist and educator born and raised in Miami, Florida.

Martinez’s practice is based in Philadelphia. He was a Pew Fellowship in the Arts recipient in 2001, received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship in 2003, and was recently awarded both a 2019 Independent Creative Production Grant from the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation and a 2019 Independence Foundation Fellowship. He has participated in several artist residency programs including: the Rosenbach Museum, the Fabric Workshop, the Fountainhead Residency, Arcadia Summer Arts Program, MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Banff Centre, the Studios at MASS MoCA and the Joan Mitchell Center.

Martinez attended the Skowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting in 2003, and received his MFA from Tyler School of Art in 1991 and his BFA from the University of Florida in 1998. He has been teaching in the Photo Program for the Department of Fine Arts, PennDesign for the last 20 years. He serves on the Advisory Board for the Center for the Emerging Visual Artist, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center and Galaei (a Queer LatinX social justice organization).

Gabriel Martinez has created performances and installations for various venues including: in Philadelphia at the Institute of Contemporary Art, The Fabric Workshop & Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, the Bike Stop, Fjord, William Way LGBT Community Center and Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art; in New York at White Columns, Leslie Lohman Gay Art Museum’s Prince Street Project Space, Franklin Furnace, Exit Art and Thread Waxing Space; and in Miami at Miami Art Central and Bernice Steinbaum Gallery. His work is included in the Phaidon Press publication "Art & Queer Culture" (Themes and Movements Series) and is featured in En Foco’s recent Nueva Luz issue, Vol 22.2: The Queer Issue. His work is included in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Fabric Workshop & Museum and the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay Art.

gabrielmartinez.com

“Paul Anthony Smith’s picotage series consists of photographs the artist has taken, often in Jamaica, London and New York City, that are subsequently enhanced through his method of picotage layering. Using a small-tipped blade, Smith picks away at the surface of the print, folding it back in different directions to create a unique tactile surface, while also veiling the subject’s identity. Referencing both W.E.B. Du Bois’ concept of double consciousness and Franz Fanon’s theory of diasporic cultural confusions caused by colonialism, Smith’s picotage patterning alludes to fences, borders, and barriers in order to conceal and alter his subjects and landscapes. Throughout this series Smith interrogates which elements of identity are allowed to pass through the complexities of borders and migration, while also challenging the potential of a photographic image to retain past truths and constructed realities.”   

- Jack Shainman Gallery

Paul Anthony Smith (b. Jamaica, 1988) creates paintings and unique picotages on pigment prints that explore the artist’s autobiography, as well as issues of identity within the African diaspora. Referencing both W.E.B. Du Bois’ concept of double consciousness and Franz Fanon’s theory of diasporic cultural confusions caused by colonialism, Smith alludes to African rituals, tribal masks, and scarification to obscure and alter his subjects. Trained in ceramics, Smith uses sharp, hand-crafted wooden and metal tools to meticulously pick away at the surfaces of his photographic prints, achieving a complex, detailed texture.

Smith’s practice celebrates the rich histories of the post-colonial Caribbean and its people. His layered picotage is often patterned in the style of Caribbean breeze block fences and modernist architectural elements that function as veils, meant both to obscure and to protect Smith’s subjects with a purposefully perplexing effect. Smith’s work has been acquired by numerous public collections, including the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Blanton Museum at the University of Texas, Austin, and has been featured in numerous museum exhibitions, including a solo show at the Atlanta Contemporary, a two-person show at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, and group shows at the New Museum, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC; the Seattle Art Museum, WA; the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; among others.

paulanthonysmith.net

“My work is the result of an instinctual reaction to materials. Appropriated images, found objects, and nontraditional media are juxtaposed in ways that resonate with me during an intuitive creative process. Of particular interest to me is visualizing a new purpose for discarded materials, eliciting their intrinsic value, and producing work using the most immediate means. The results are sometimes abstract, usually wry, and always part of an ongoing inner dialogue. These handmade collages, using vintage images, allow the viewer to construct a narrative and consider the possibility that these are depictions of actual events.”

Eric Toscano earned his BFA from Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ and his MFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA where he received the Richard Henkels Award. His collage work has been exhibited at numerous venues in the region including MK Apothecary Gallery in Collingswood, NJ and the Painted Bride in Philadelphia, PA. The artist lives and works in Marlton, NJ surrounded by old magazines.

erictoscano.com

“This series began in 2014 about the opioid crisis in Philadelphia, which has only gotten worse since then. Some works in the series are portraits of people struggling with addiction to opioids printed in white ink on mirror. Then the gallery lights are aimed to project the portrait in the form of a shadow, making the shadow the final piece, rather than the screen print. Metaphorically presenting them as the shadow of themselves that they have become. The other works in the series are inspired by old mirrors and traditional photography methods such as daguerreotypes and their reflective negative/positive effect. With these pieces it is necessary for the viewer to look at the portrait from different angles to ‘really see’ the portrait. All the while the viewer’s own reflection is seen. This work of the current opioid problem in Philadelphia is my way of asking, ‘How do we want this time and this issue documented or remembered? Will we see the problem or continue ignoring it?’ We see these addicted individuals, but we ignore them and the subsequent problems that are created, they have become the visible unseen. I want to confront the viewer simultaneously with the image of themselves and the victims, in hopes of the viewer seeing this issue as their problem too, not just the problem of the addicted.”

Shaped by his family and his working-class background, Steven Earl Weber’s work addresses personal identity and social commentary by fusing politics, beauty, craftsmanship and concept. Through sculpture, print, and installation, he encourages the viewer to experience, and interpret, and embody social change. Weber received his BFA from Kent State University and his MFA from the University of Delaware. A resident of Philadelphia, his work has been exhibited locally and internationally with exhibitions at Summerhall Arts Museum in Edinburgh Scotland; Roxy Art House and The Demarco European Art Foundation, in Edinburgh Scotland and The Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast, Ireland. He was also part of the Due South exhibit at The Delaware Contemporary Museum, in Wilmington Delaware after being sent with a group of artists to Sicily. He has designed sets and costumes for ballet companies such as The Philadelphia Ballet at The Academy of Music and Ballet X at the Wilma Theater, Philadelphia. Additionally, his work has been featured in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Circa Magazine, The Scotsman Newspaper, and Art in America. Steven Earl Weber also works for the Philadelphia School District teaching art to children from kindergarten through 5th grade.

stevenearlweber.com