About the Gallery Artists Represented Exhibition Archives Gallery Home Marsha Mateyka Gallery Exhibition Archive Susan Eder / Craig Dennis Mutations / Hide & Seek February 14 - April 4, 2015 reception for the artists:  Saturday, March 14 Press Release Washington Post Review

Susan Eder / Craig Dennis Hide & Seek (Red Glider), 2013 LightJet print on glossy paper mounted on DiBond, diptych, each 26 x 26 inches (26 x 52 total), edition: 3 Hide & Seek (Great Blue Morpho), 2013 LightJet print on glossy paper mounted on DiBond, diptych, each 40 x 40 inches (40 x 80 total), edition: 3 Hide & Seek (Violet Morpho), 2013 LightJet print on glossy paper mounted on DiBond, diptych, each 41 x 41 inches (41 x 82 total), edition: 3 Hide & Seek (Demon), 2013 LightJet print on glossy paper mounted on DiBond, diptych, each 33 x 33 inches (33 x 66 total), edition: 3 Susan Eder Calypsa (Normal Blossom/Peloric Mutation), 2014 Unretouched photo of normal and mutated orchid blossoms of the same variety. LightJet print, 18 x 29.5 inches, matted. edition: 5 Exoplanet (Normal Blossom/Peloric Mutation), 2014 Unretouched photo of normal and mutated orchid blossoms of the same variety. LightJet print, 18 x 29.5 inches, matted. edition: 5 Golden Treasure 2 (Normal Blossom/Peloric Mutation), 2014 Unretouched photo of normal and mutated orchid blossoms of the same variety. LightJet print, 18 x 29.5 inches, matted. edition: 5 Salmon Sunset (Normal Blossom/Peloric Mutation), 2014 Unretouched photo of normal and mutated orchid blossoms of the same variety. LightJet print, 18 x 29.5 inches, matted. edition: 5 Clover (Mutation #1), 2012 Unretouched photo of 4-leaf clover found by the artist. LightJet print, 24 x 24 inches, matted. edition: 5 Clover (Mutation #4), 2012 Unretouched photo of 4-leaf clover found by the artist. LightJet print, 24 x 24 inches, matted. edition: 5 Clover (Mutation #5), 2012 Unretouched photo of 5-leaf clover found by the artist. LightJet print, 24 x 24 inches, matted. edition: 5 Clover (Mutation #6), 2012 Unretouched photo of 6-leaf clover found by the artist. LightJet print, 24 x 24 inches, matted. edition: 5

Available works by Susan Eder / Craig Dennis

Press Release* A new series of photographs by the collaborative team Susan Eder/Craig Dennis is featured in the gallery’s current exhibition.  In addition to their collaborations which have been ongoing since 2001, each artist works independently.  This exhibition also includes two new series by Susan Eder. Susan Eder and Craig Dennis have often described their collaborative work as follows:  “We are intrigued by the gap between representation and abstraction and often operate at the very fulcrum on which images pivot from one mode into the other.  Our work pursues the underlying perceptual and cultural mechanisms by which pure abstraction starts to represent, and the recognizable is transmuted into new meanings.” Their new series is titled “Hide & Seek”.  Here the artists have paired “photographs of two extremely close-up, greatly enlarged views of the top and bottom sides of a butterfly’s overlapped wings.  By focusing on pattern and coloring—camouflage for hiding and vivid color for seeking a mate—the piece alludes to broader concepts of duality, deception and adaptability.” Biological mutations have fascinated Susan Eder for many years.  In her two new series, she presents mutations she has found in clovers and orchids.   “Clovers with more than three leaves are mutations resulting from environmental and genetic causes, occurring approximately once for every 10,000-20,000 normal specimens.  They are reproductive errors…..yet have been considered fortuitous for millennia.”  The images in this exhibition include 4, 5 and 6 leaf clovers that the artist has collected and photographed over a number of years. Susan Eder’s orchid series focuses on comparisons of normal and peloric blossoms of the same variety.  These variations in structure and color occasionally occur in the wild, but are much more common in genetically manipulated and cloned orchids grown for the mass market.  The comparisons are greatly enlarged and dramatically presented in these new photographs. All the photographs in this exhibition are LightJet prints in small editions.  The printing process uses laser light to project high-resolution images on photo-sensitive paper, preserving maximum detail and luminosity.  Susan Eder and Craig Dennis emphasize that they do not alter or fabricate the actual subject matter of their photographs which are all taken directly from nature. *All quotes from Susan Eder and Craig Dennis.

Reviews In the galleries: "Hide & Seek" reveals the beauty in details by Mark Jenkins The Washington Post, March 22, 2015, pg E4 Artistic collaborators Susan Eder and Craig Dennis specialize in near-abstract patterns, but they don’t make them.  The Northern Virginia photographers find them in nature—gazing at clouds, bananas or other commonplace things through a macro lens.  The diptychs in “Hide & Seek”, their show at Marsha Mateyka Gallery, look at butterflies from both sides.  The two-panel pictures contrast the undersides of the insects’ wings, which feature mottled browns and eye-shaped ovals as camouflage, with tops of silky blue or red.  The vividly single-hued wings are used to attract mates, but when photographed and enlarged dramatically, they resemble color-field paintings. Eder also does solo work, such as the “Mutations” the gallery is showing. One set depicts four-, five- and six-leaf clovers, each biological curiosity endowed with authenticity by such little flaws as small holes and brown spots.  The clovers are shown in glass vessels, while Eder arrays orchids in front of black backdrops,  highlighting their voluptuous pinkness. Aside from arranging them in pairs or groups, Eder doesn’t manipulate the orchid images. Four-leaf clovers are natural phenomena, but the most unusual orchids (called peloric mutations) result from cloning or genetic alteration. Magnified and isolated, they are both beautiful and bizarre.  Eder simply observes, but the greenhouse alchemists who beget such blooms engage in strange magic. Susan Eder/Craig Dennis: Mutations/ Hide & Seek    On view through April 4 at Marsha Mateyka Gallery, 2012 R St. NW. 202 328-0088. www.marshamateykagallery.com

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