TRACY L CHANDLER

TRACY L CHANDLER : THE EDGE OF I

Summer 2023
Open by appointment : text 646-256-6856

Events
Opening reception : Saturday June 10th 5pm-8pm
Gallery Day : Saturday September 9th 9am-6pm

Gallery 169
169 W Channel Rd, 
Santa Monica, CA 90402
Gallery169.com
@gallery169

Tracylchandler.com
@tracylchandler

TRACY L CHANDLER : THE EDGE OF I brings together two bodies of the artist’s photographic work. A typological series of portraits of adolescent youths and a narrative series of landscape, still life, and portrait photographs all made in the artist’s hometown in the California desert. 

THE WEIGHT OF INFINITE POSSIBILITIES explores the process of a “self” in-the-making via the turbulent and mercurial stage of adolescence. Chandler writes, “As I make these portraits I aim to be present with my subject yet their future and my past weigh heavy. I project the uncertainty of the world they inherit and am reminded of my own coming of age in all its awkward intensity. But I am also curious to look beyond the personal and at the representation itself. I am interested in seeing what it looks like to make a photograph, a fraction of a second, that references an extremely temporal experience in human development.”

A POOR SORT OF MEMORY explores the artist’s own personal history and specific memories to craft a new loose photographic fiction. Chandler explains, “As I revisit old hideouts in concrete washes and private bunks in rock formations, I am reminded of a past laden with trauma and my youthful desperation to find both a sense of belonging and an independent self. I would escape the morbid chaos of my family home and take refuge in the edges. Now I return to these spaces to photograph and there is ambivalence as I explore this landscape. I contend with the conflict of the seemingly objective reality before me versus the subjective truth of my memories. I find myself chasing ghosts and evading monsters. I struggle to parse memory from fantasy and reflection from projection. As I work, I attempt to embrace this unreliable narrator. Do I believe making photographs will bring back some sort of truth? My experience is the opposite. The pictures seem to take me further down the rabbit hole. And as the White Queen says to Alice,...“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.” 

In TRACY L CHANDLER : THE EDGE OF I, both of Chandler’s works contend with transience; the transience of self and the transience of memory, only to be further complexified by the illusory function of photography itself. She challenges the viewer to experience two paradoxical notions; that change is the only constant and that we can still hold tight to a small slice of the now. 

TRACY L CHANDLER : THE EDGE OF I will include archival pigment prints from both bodies of work as well as screen a short film of A POOR SORT OF MEMORY that was commissioned by Le Recontres De La Photographie in Arles. The show opens at Gallery 169 on Saturday June 10th and will run through August. Please stay tuned for additional dates for artist talk and closing reception.

For gallery appointments, sales, and commissions please contact Frank Langen or the artist directly…

Frank Langen
franklangen@mac.com
310-963-3891

Tracy L Chandler
tracylchandler@gmail.com
646-256-6856