Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Library
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Campus & Community
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Library
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Campus & Community

Light Work Presents Exhibition of Works by Melissa Catanese

Wednesday, March 23, 2022, By Cjala Surratt
Share
Light Workphotography

Light Work presents “The Lottery,” a solo exhibition of new works by Pittsburgh-based photographer Melissa Catanese. In the exhibition, Catanese turns her attention to the tense and confusing state of contemporary politics and culture. Her images bring together large groups of people, barren caverns, natural forces, physical exertion and eruptions both crude and colorful. The accumulated manic puzzle shifts the viewer from crowded street to darkened cavern. Along the way, we see a geyser of oil, streaks of lightning, veins of molten rock and cooling craters. Punctuating these natural phenomena are people in states of glee, pain, confusion and anguish.

Exhibition photo-crowd

Crowd No. 1 (Image by Melisa Catanese)

An opening reception with Catanese will be held on Thursday, March 24, from 5-7 p.m.  An artist talk with Catanese will begin at 6 p.m. and be followed by a Q&A with reception guests. Signed copies of her exhibition catalog, “Contact Sheet 216,” will be available for purchase after the talk. The reception and artist talk are free and open to the public.

The exhibition is on display in Light Work’s Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery,  located in the Robert B. Menschel Media Center, 316 Waverly Avenue, through July 22. Visit the Light Work website for more information on gallery hours.

About the Exhibition

Catanese borrows the title of the exhibition from literature. In Shirley Jackson’s famous short story, a village casually embarks on a yearly ritual of selecting an individual and then stoning them to death. Catanese’s “The Lottery” teases out similar themes regarding ritual, culture and the diffused accountability of a mob.

Exhibition photo--person floating

Image by Melissa Catanese

Catanese’s work blends anonymous photographs, press clips and images from NASA’s archive with her own. Single images resemble sentence fragments that Catanese completes with her sequences. Sometimes seamlessly blending in, Catanese’s own images also act as punctuation throughout the work. This creates a sensation of call and response between the archival material and Catanese’s own images that brings to mind the Chauvet Cave in southeastern France. There, brilliant cave paintings date back 37,000 years. Over this enormous stretch of time, additional visitors added their own marks to the cave murals, sometimes with gaps of more than 5,000 years. The idea that collaboration can reach across time, decoding or willfully rethinking, is present throughout “The Lottery.”

Melissa Catanese makes artist’s books and installations from photographic images, both personal and anonymous. For some years, she has been editing images from Peter J. Cohen’s photography collection of more than 30,000 vernacular and found anonymous photographs spanning the early to mid-20th century. Catanese combines photographs from her own archive with Cohen’s found images to create elliptical narratives. In doing so, she questions photographic authorship and the apparent transparency of the photographic image’s meaning. Her readings become personal, intuitive and openly poetic. She is the author of “Dive Dark Dream Slow” (2012), “Dangerous Women” (2013), “Hells Hollow Fallen Monarch” (2015) and “Voyagers” (2018). Catanese holds a B.F.A. from Columbus College of Art and Design (2001) and an M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art (2006). She has exhibited work at Aperture Foundation (New York City), Cleveland Museum of Art, Mulhouse Biennial of Photography (Mulhouse, France), No Found Photo Fair (Paris) and Pier 24 Photography (San Francisco). Catanese is the founder of Spaces Corners, an artist-run photography bookshop and project space in Pittsburgh. Her teaching appointments include, most recently, the University of Pittsburgh.

 

 

 

  • Author

Cjala Surratt

  • Recent
  • Department of Drama Presents ‘Dance Nation’
    Friday, March 24, 2023, By Joanna Penalva
  • Three Faculty Members Collect Top National Awards and Grants
    Friday, March 24, 2023, By Dan Bernardi
  • Falk College Nutrition Science Students Examining Impact of Father’s Obesity on Children
    Friday, March 24, 2023, By Matt Michael
  • Student Veterans Spend Spring Break in Atlanta
    Friday, March 24, 2023, By Charlie Poag
  • Third Thonis Endowed Professorship Announced: The Multiplier Effect in Philanthropy
    Friday, March 24, 2023, By Eileen Korey

More In Campus & Community

Third Thonis Endowed Professorship Announced: The Multiplier Effect in Philanthropy

On the drive from his home in Wellesley, Massachusetts, to his alma mater in Syracuse, New York, Michael G. “Mike” Thonis ’72 says he counts rock formations, knows all their geological names and notices “as they suddenly become very dark…

Community Review Board Seeks Applications for New Members

Dear Fellow Students, Faculty and Staff: As I conclude my time as chair of the inaugural Community Review Board (CRB), I write to you today to invite members of our University community to apply to serve on the CRB. As…

Social Work Presents Social Justice Awards March 30

March is National Professional Social Work Month, and the School of Social Work in the Falk College is presenting its annual Dan and Mary Lou Rubenstein Social Justice Award program from 6:45-8 p.m. on Thursday, March 30 in Falk College…

Margaret ‘Peg’ Hermann, the Moynihan Institute’s Longtime Leader, Retires

The late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “If I were 26 again, I would be out in the world working with others on problems that no one country can solve on its own.” His words encapsulate the mission…

New Course-Tagging Tools Available to Assist with Undergraduate Course Selection

The Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Shared Competencies and the Office of Academic Affairs are now providing online tools to help undergraduate students make course selections according to the Shared Competencies offered by various courses. Among those tools are: A…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • @SUCampus
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2023 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.