Last Updated on 09 February 2012

 

Past Artists
Christopher Meerdo
October 3 – December 31, 2011
 
Leopold and Whitney Tassie are pleased to present two bodies of work by Christopher Meerdo that consider memory, nostalgia, and technology. The first, entitled Billboard Groves, is a series of nightscapes, photographed by the artist with a 4x5 camera while driving across the Midwest. Memories of sitting in the backseat of his family’s car while driving through the night to visit relatives inspired Meerdo to make this series. Each photograph features a grove of leafy green trees illuminated by billboard lights along the highway; however, the billboard itself is left out of the picture. Produced as glowing light boxes, Meerdo’s photographs co-opt advertising technology to produce a dramatic, other-worldly image. Having grown up as part of the most marketed-to generation, Meerdo’s series seems a nostalgic nod to childhood naiveté and acts as documentation of a poetic byproduct of American’s in-your-face mass marketing.


The second body of work, Reiteration, meerdo pairs photographs taken by the artist and the artist’s grandfather. When his grandfather passed way, he left his 1930s Rolleiflex camera and over 3,000 negatives shot with the camera to the artist. After sorting though the archive that spanned 40 years of family history, Meerdo traveled to his grandfather’s old home, no longer owned by the Meerdo family, and re-photographed 15 of the original photos with the same old, sturdy camera. His grandfather’s vintage photographs, heavy with nostalgia, hang on the left while the artist’s updated images occupy the right side of each diptych. Taken some 15-40 years after the originals, the photographs on right pop with color but have a hazy, almost dreamlike quality due to their outdated production technology. Though his grandfather’s house is altered and renovated in Meerdo’s new photos, it maintains the same footprint and stands consistently in both images. Meerdo’s family, however, is noticeably absent from the right side of the diptych.


Christopher Meerdo (American, born 1981, lives Chicago IL) received his Bachelors of Fine Art from Northern Michigan University in 2003 and his Masters of Fine Art in Photography in 2011 from the University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois where he was awarded the Provost’s Award for Graduate Research. Recently, he was an Artist in Residence at ACRE in Steuben, WI and Ox-Bow in Saugatuck, MI. His work has been exhibited all over Chicago, at venues including Gallery 400, the Hyde Park Art Center, Roots and Culture, Co-Prosperity Sphere, Harper College, and I-Space and has been written about in publications including ArtSlant, Art21 Online, Time Out Chicago, NewCity, The Chicago Sun-Times, and The Chicago Tribune. Already in his young career he has been awarded two Individual Artists Grants from the Illinois Arts Council. Recently Meerdo was awarded a SIM Residency in Reykjavik, Iceland which he will attend in Spring 2012.


For more information, please visit Christopher Meerdo's website or contact Whitney Tassie Projects at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 407.625.2074.


 

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