Eleanor Harwood Gallery is pleased to present Never Odd or Even, a solo exhibition by Alexis Anne Mackenzie.
Using un-retouched found images which have been enlarged, or are pages taken directly from vintage books, Mackenzie physically reworks, interweaves, and overlays images, resulting in her own highly personalized interpretations. In contrast to the imagery of composed floral arrangements used in previous work, the content in Never Odd or Eventurns to the wild and un-staged.
In Set to Rise, the interweaving of a nude woman in a single split gesture and waves at sunset creates an image of a woman simultaneously bowing to the thrashing tides while absorbing the power of the sun and fire in her belly. Mackenzie’s image represents both her subjects vulnerability to and the harnessing of larger forces. Using photographs of the human body and nature which, in their original contexts, were intended to simply illustrate places and things, Mackenzie seeks to instill the images with a heightened degree of emotional response for the viewer. She prompts this response by creating an intersection of a person and a place; a state of being. Similarly, she also manipulates single images within themselves as a commentary on the malleability and fallibility of perception and the ways in which our minds can distort and filter reality through our own personal lens.
Working within strict, self-imposed guidelines, Mackenzie attempts to push the limits of reinterpretation, distortion, and mirroring, using only overlaid imagery or reworking a single image, without digital intervention or duplication of a single image. The images are purposefully un-retouched, an extension of her own personal beliefs about the acceptance of things we cannot change. And yet, each image has been carefully manipulated— an allegory for working with what one is given in life and conviction that life’s imperfections contribute to beauty and growth in all things.
