How wide is the gulf?

Gonzalo Reyes Rodríguez, Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez and Brooke White

February 23–March 13th • Philadelphia, PA

Opening Reception : Friday, March 2, 2018, 6-10 PM
Open Hours : Regular Hours are Weekdays by appointment and Weekends 1-5 PM
Special Hours for SPE Conference: 2/28–3/4, daily 1-5 PM, Friday 1-10 PM

How Wide is the Gulf? is a three-person exhibition, curated by Rebekah Flake, featuring lens-based projects by Gonzalo Reyes Rodríguez, Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez and Brooke White. Their works address the distance(s)—both measured and felt—across the broad liquid border cocooned by North America and several island states. All three artists are engaged in the academic field of photography in the United States, yet their personal lives and art practices link to Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba and beyond.

In Objective Confess, Gonzalo Reyes Rodríguez combines video documentation of the Cibeles fountain installed in Madrid with footage of its exact replica in Mexico City. Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez has collaborated with her brother Joshua, an active duty marine stationed in Camp Pendleton, for Gringolandia. This ongoing series tracks the transition of Puerto Rican machismo as it takes on the expression of American citizenship through the armed forces in both a personal and collective way. A special feature of this exhibition is a compilation of Roca Gonzalez’s video shorts created in the long days and weeks following the three hurricanes of September 2017, which pummeled Puerto Rico, severing all communication between the artist and her loved ones. The New South Project by Brooke White has led the artist to India, Cuba and the Deep Southern United States to contemplate the inter-connectedness of technology, politics and the environment. How Wide is the Gulf? will present a selection of White’s abstracted panoramas from Cuba, provisionally re-opened to American tourists in 2014 but restricted again in 2017 under the Trump administration.

The sea flows, evaporates, precipitates, surges and retracts in waves—like citizenship, like intimacy, like borders.

Artists

Gonzalo Reyes Rodríguez lives and works in Chicago. He works with photography, video and multi screen installation to examine the slippage between time and the act of image creation. His projects examine the ambiguities of language and of what is gained or lost in the translation from image to text. His most recent work has been presented in exhibitions at ACRE Projects in Chicago, Vox Populi, Philadelphia; MAMA Gallery, Los Angeles; The Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; and a solo exhibition at the Windor Contemporáneo in Madrid. He has participated in residencies at ACRE, and the Program for Advanced Studies in Critical Practices at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. He has studied at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and received a B.F.A from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an M.F.A from the University of Pennsylvania. Reyes Rodríguez is currently a professor in the department of Art and Architecture at City Colleges of Chicago.
Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez resides in Tampa, Florida, where she is a graduate student in the Interdisciplinary Arts M.F.A program at the University Of South Florida. She received a B.F.A from Pennsylvania College of Art and Design
(PCA&D) in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 2017 and also studied Criminal Justice & Political Science at Universidad Interamericana Recinto de Aguadilla in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. Her work explores connections between her Puerto Rican origins and contemporary American life in themes of intimacy, family, body and place.
Brooke White is both a practicing artist and an educator specializing in fine art photography and video art. Much of her work investigates the intersection of identity, place and new media practices by resituating the role of geography, politics, and technology relative to the landscape. Living in geographically diverse places and unfamiliar landscapes has inspired her to contemplate the role that politics and technology have on the developing world. White actively
exhibits her photographs and videos nationally and internationally including the Hammer Museum, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, MASSMoCA and the DiVA Art Fair in New York, Paris and Berlin. Her work has been published in Aint Bad Magazine and Don't Take Pictures and she is the recipient of multiple grants including the Mississippi Arts Commission and a Senior Fulbright Scholar. She is Associate Professor of Art, Assistant Chair and
Area Head of Imaging Arts at the University of Mississippi.

Curator

Rebekah Flake is a Canadian-American artist using lens-based media and curatorial methods to explore migration narratives and the psycho-social effects of borders. Her latest project, The Canada Option , relates to achieving dual citizenship in the Trump era and has been on view at The Delaware Contemporary in winter 2017-18. A 2014 collaboration with The Icebox Project Space brought together reenactors and living historians in an installation and public program marking the 150th anniversary of the U.S. Civil War and Philadelphia’s proximity to the Mason-Dixon Line. She was awarded a DAAD Fellowship to the Freie Universität Berlin and has also worked in residence at The Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa. She has produced projects and programs as a member of the artist-run collectives Little Berlin and Gravy Studio & Gallery. Flake holds an M.F.A. in Photography from Tyler
School of Art at Temple University, a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.A. from the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art. Her studio is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she also teaches photography and digital media.

SPE National Conference

How Wide is the Gulf? coincides with the Society for Photographic Education's annual national conference. This year's theme is Uncertain Times: Borders, Refuge, Community, Nationhood. Gravy will hold special open hours during the conference:

2/28–3/4, daily 1-5 PM, Friday 1-10 PM

More info:
https://www.spenational.org/exhibitions/2018/03/01/spe-2018-annual-conference