Liz Deschenes

“In the best modernist tradition, [Deschenes] pushes against the basic terms by which photography is conventionally defined: instantaneity, veracity, fixity, or reproducibility.” — curator and critic Matthew Witkovsky

Deschenes uses durational photogram exposure to create unique, shifting surfaces that frequently function as sculptural or architectural, rather than photographic, objects. In her recent work, Deschenes exposes photographic paper to the night sky, develops it, and fixes the photogram with silver toner, creating misty silver surfaces brindled with slight changes in hue that are affected either by exposure to ambient light or the hand-application of the toner itself. Some of these photograms remain unframed and oxidize over time, further problematizing the role of the photograph as fixed image on surface. Instead, purged of representational content, the photograph, in Deschenes’s practice, functions as an object that records how it has been, and continues to be, acted upon.

Deschenes’ work is held in the permanent collections of Centre Pompidou, Paris; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Art Institute of Chicago; ICA/Boston; Pinault Collection, Paris; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Milwaukee Art Museum; Princeton University Art Museum; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.