AARON MCELROY

After Wake

February 25 to March 24, 2013

Ampersand is pleased to present After Wake, a solo exhibition of 200+ photographs by Brooklyn artist Arron McElroy. Installed as an expansive mix of 5x7 inch prints tacked to the wall & paired with framed enlargements, at root After Wake is a photographic edit of visual fragments & anonymous female subjects from the artist’s daily life. Separated from the minutia of McElroy’s lived reality, however, the photographs also allow for an endless drift of fictitious suggestion & voyeurism. After Wake can be a half-alert morning recollection of disjointed dreams. Or it's a catalog of contradictory eyewitness accounts. It may also be selections from the visual diaries & detritus of a life-long peeping tom. Perhaps it's a snapshot paper trail of lovely women from a savant's poetic thoughts. Or it's the happy Saturday memories of two lovers, tinged by the banal possessions of a soiled suburban life. It may also be something like outtakes from a B movie chronicling pleasure, grotesque beauty, infidelity, addiction, abuse & redemption. In short, After Wake is a collection of provoking photographs by McElory that eschews concept & theory in favor of imagination & a stream of inchoate ideas.

Ampersand has also designed & published a tightly edited collection of 44 photographs from McElroy’s most recent work. Also titled After Wake, the book is limited to 100 copies. 15 signed & numbered copies include one of three 5x7 inch signed photographs.

Aaron McElroy’s photographs have been widely published & featured in exhibitions at FOAM Photography Museum in Amsterdam, Smack Mellon in Brooklyn, NY & the Chelsea Art Museum. His recent solo debut exhibition in New York, 200 And Something Notes, was held at Horton Gallery this past December. McElroy lives & works in Brooklyn; he attended the New England School of Photography.

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