Murray Guy is pleased to present an exhibition of 35mm slide shows and projections. Using the slide projection as lecture, narrative or static picture, each of the works in the show takes into account and takes advantage of the idiosyncrasies of the magic lantern mechanics of projecting light through a transparency on to a surface

Kota Ezawa’s slide lecture On Photography presents twenty images representing various examples from the history of photography – from the 1860s to the present, and from the iconic to the unrecognizable. His choices are manually traced, turned back into 35 mm slide format, and projected on a continuous loop. On Photography is a visual critical essay, using digital drawings instead of words to explore and reveal the history of the medium.

A carousel of slides found in a New Jersey dumpster is the basis for Madeline Djerejian and Anibal Jorge Pella’s Security. The instructional slide lecture, a training and orientation program for security guards has a magenta tone – the “red shift” result of emulsion deterioration – conferring a “rose tint” to the endeavors of a group of men.

Also working with found slides Kevin Arrow’s individual images are enhanced and projected through a simple device that animates them.  The psychedelic effects thus created add aura, mystery and magic to the religious, sci-fi and bureaucratic imagery.

In Corey McCorkle’s Selections for Another Oshi-ita, a found continuity shot of Shirley McLaine serves as the vase for 80 ikebana flower arrangements chosen from the 365 made one a day over one year. Oshi-ita refers to the sacred site of ritual offering. Projected into a corner the work becomes its own tokonoma.

Matthew Buckingham’s Image of Absalon to Be Projected Until it Vanishes, a single 35mm slide-image of a public sculpture depicting the mythic founder of Copenhagen, is projected constantly throughout the exhibition. Over that time the heat from the projector lamp will slowly alter the emulsion on the slide, creating a protracted, almost cinematic ‘fade-out’ or dissolve which challenges the monument’s attempt to fix meaning against the flow of time;

Another work by Matthew Buckingham, From 1957 to 1969 This Building was Empty, is a narrative, shown as inter-titles along with one fixed image. Reading like the captions of a film, the narrative recounts a period in the history of the church of St. Anne in Brooklyn whose priest was accused of being a communist and was swept up in the McCarthy hearings.

Barbara Probst’s Was wirklich geschah (What really happened) is another kind of narrative. In a looped sequence of 80 slides, various locations in New York are connected by a process of picture in a picture images, making overt reference on the way to works by Robert Morris, Robert Smithson. Michael Snow etc.

Dealing with spaces of representation, Anita Witek’s Before & After presents a chronological sequence of images from the 19^th century to the present of parallel narrative themes regarding the photography studio, the relationship between photographer and model and the history of room types.