Adrienne Eberhardt / closing reception for Emotional Science

The Bindery hosts a closing for Adrienne Eberhardt‘s exhibition Emotional Science

Emotional Science presents experimental and analog work Adrienne made as a teenager in her makeshift darkroom in St. Louis, Missouri. She will also be displaying a more recent series of self portraits entitled “Closer Still.”

Artist statement: The long, isolating gray winters growing up in Missouri were always a highly creative period for me. I spent so many days inside my darkroom, listening to music, looking at negatives and experimenting with image making. I was intrigued by the concept of photography: that light enabled an image to reflect off a mirror and record time. Many of the images I made represent 1-2 hour exposures of me literately standing in the dark with my enlarger dodging and burning parts of an image in to see what I could pull from it.

Adrienne’s technique may be described as a subtle interplay of the intentional and the accidental, which in turn reflects the cycle of disorder and reconstruction that characterize memory and life experience. By playing with light and texture, she allows the medium and method to interpret her subjects, often distorting individual features and rendering spaces ambiguous. The emotions explored have no definable shape and cannot be limited to the experience of one person; rather the purpose and process of her work is to remove forced definitions and expected categories to create an experience that is simultaneously recognizable and universal.

Her more recent body of work entitled “Closer Still” is a series of self portraits and represents two important firsts: using herself as a subject, and working in a digital medium. She painted exposed photographic paper and allowed the water and paint to dry in puddles, again letting time and randomness play a role in the formulation of the texture and final image. In “An Unusual Appearance of Light” the figure interacts with her environment by surfacing with clarity, arms raised up in a possible combination of surrender, exhibition, and confrontation. The figure appears to invite the viewer into a direct and mutual transmission of thought and feeling, and the distinct light surrounding the subject in this moment gives clues about what is before her. As with all of Adrienne’s work the exchange between subject and viewer is left ambiguous, inviting the viewer to explore the concept behind the process and his or her own possibilities of seeing.

Adrienne, the Creative Director of her own multi-disciplinary design studio based in San Francisco, will be on hand with originals and limited edition prints for sale, and a cash bar will be open from 6 – 9pm.

Please note: this event will be at The Bindery at 1727 Haight. RSVP appreciated but not required.