Gray Contemporary will present Evanescent Tales, an exhibition of new works by Raphael Zollinger. Zollinger’s most recent body of work is a series of pigment prints on aluminum that focuses on the effects of time by examining the material degradation of photographs. By privileging the photograph’s physical attributes - cracks, tears, scratches - over its image, Zollinger reframes fragments of photographs as his subjects to create new images that elevate the photographic object’s history, handling, and deterioration to monumental status.

Through this reframing, distancing and doubling, these works function as a lens looking at the past, by way of imagery carried on the surface, while remaining firmly rooted in the present, by way of the object’s digitally derived facture. This dichotomy points to the shifting role of the photographic object as a memory object in our screen based culture.

Across his work, Zollinger is interested in what happens when images and objects are re-contextualized not just in time, but also in form, function and material. This process enables him to question how objects and images build and shed meaning over time, to connect history with the present, and to make visible the fallibility of reconstructed memory.

Following the opening reception, the exhibit will be on display through August 28.