Sarah Sieradzki (b. 1986, New York, NY USA)

“Photographs are commonplace,” asserts genre-defying mixed media artist and photographer Sarah Sieradzki, “their conventions recognizable, and more often than not, their nostalgic obligation to a particular time and place must shine through in some glorified light. In order to confront both the physical and temporal boundaries of photographs, my work seeks to simultaneously deflate the tired old regime of the “grand photograph” and reveal some unexpected possibilities that are latent in the medium. Is it the frame that constitutes the photograph in physical space, or perhaps, its relationship to time as it reduces its authoritative force to a feeble nuance? We live in a world that serves as an interesting platform from which we can collect, perform, edit, and arrange things we see. I believe objects, photographs, materials, colors, and text, in radically different contexts and arrangements, can relieve themselves of their traditional associations and enter into new, Platonic relationships with each other. Whatever it means to place one material next to another; to imply an image of a sunset “rising” over an IKEA chair… It suggests nothing, but reminds us of everything. They are universal aesthetics that have no denomination and can be put in a vast category of Things We See.”

Sieradzki received her BFA in Photography and Visual / Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010. Select galleries and venues that have exhibited her work include Bushwick Open Studios, Brooklyn (2011), Carmichael Gallery, Los Angeles (2010), Rainbo Club, Chicago, Monument 2 Gallery, Chicago (2010) and New York Studio Program, Brooklyn (2009). She was the 2010 recipient of the Fred Endsley Memorial Fellowship, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn.

Image: Sarah Sieradzki, Sometime Before Mourning, and also Before Morning/R.O.Y., Flesh, Chair, Marbled Paper, Rock, Arctic White, Tiled Floor, 2011, archival pigment print, 30 x 40 inches (76.2 x 101.6 cm).

(c) Sarah Sieradzki