Mondo Fine Art is proud to present our annual Spring show: when space becomes place, curated by Mikell Stringham. This show brings together talented artists from New York (originally from Colombia and Berlin) and Utah who approach the topic of space and place in their work in unique ways. Most artists will be present at the show to talk about their work. In the meantime, we would like to give you a preview...         Adam Bateman: “My current project, “Senderos,” is an exploration of the relationship the landscape tourist experience has with the historical crossing of the North American continent and ideas about the sublime of the pastoral landscape stemming from American Transcendentalism and the Hudson River School. I think that as tourists, we travel through the landscape in curated and designated ways, over roads and pathways that have been chosen for us. Part of the effect of this is a sameness of experience as we visit landscape destinations that results in the creation of a national shared identity that is (as it always has been) tied to travel in the landscape. In a tourist landscape destination, whether it is a national park or a viewing point at a rest stop along the interstate, our relationship to the landscape is curated with the signage and the pathway itself dictating which plants and stones we see and which views we photograph. The experience teaches us the context in which we view things in the same way a museum curates the context in which we understand a painting hung between works by other artists.” Monika Bravo: “When does a space become a place? Is it when we endow it with an emotion? This series examines the intangibility of memory and where it can be located within space. I photographed diverse facades from buildings in NYC, Barcelona, Paris, Milan and Madrid. By using a transparent film and allowing them to rest against the wall, the light that passes through the image casts a shadow in the background rendering them very cinematographic, I am interested on playing with the medium, what is supposed to be still, I want to make the illusion that moves and when using time based media at times I want the images to look as if they were still."     Stefan Hagen: “The photographs in these series are prints of negatives which have been exposed for the duration of a journey at significant places as Thoreau’s Walden Pond. Each photograph, as a result, creates an image that contains all time and place experienced during the travel using the unique ability of the photographic process to collect light. Only points of light that had been prominent at one specific place in time are now represented as a precise image. What is important for me is to capture the remembrance of a journey. What we remember of a trip is often only a very few details, but the memory usually always contains a very distinct feeling of the light and the shapes which were surrounding us.” Josh Winegar: “Throughout its history photography has played an important role in popularizing the ideas of the sublime landscape, Manifest Destiny, and the ‘land of opportunity.’ It is my intentions with this series to explore those ideas within the genre while describing a more complex vision of the American landscape. I am interested in exploring our complicated and often uneasy relationship with nature-- our presence in it, dominance over it, reverence for it, and our need to control it. This work is shot on film with a large format camera and all manipulations are done in camera. Like many photographers before me, I focus my lens on the serene and picturesque, but unlike most of them I am not interested in reinforcing the myth of the untouched land by adjusting my frame to exclude man or the man-made. Instead its presence is recorded to film to be later removed by the same means with which it was recorded, light. This is achieved through a series of multiple exposures-- one of the scene, and a subsequent exposure shot in the studio for each burst of light. It is my hope that the resulting images appear simultaneously familiar & foreign, as well as both celebratory & critical. By replacing the evidence of man with bursts of light, these places lose what have become specific pieces of their identity and are transformed into open- ended spaces. It is my hope that these spaces leave room for one to contemplate our relationship with the world we live on and question the classic notions of expansion, monumentality, and nostalgia in landscape photography.”   Please join us at Light Spot for a special evening of fantastic art, food, music, and friends. Elizabeth Gilman Gunderson of Fleur de Sel Catering will be preparing culinary treats for us from different places around the world, and award winning DJ Jesse Walker will be keeping the party going with his signature sound. Special thanks to our partnering venue, Light Spot, for hosting us in their beautiful space for the past three years.