PhotoNOLA Opening Reception: December 10, 6 - 8 pm

Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to present SurREAL, featuring photographs by Tina Freeman, Kenny Morrison, Irby Pace, and Chuck Ramirez. This exhibition explores the interconnections between the real, imagined and simulated.

Tina Freeman is an established photographer of architecture, landscape, portraits, and interiors. In SurREAL, Freeman will be exhibiting abstractions of the Earth, exploring water, glacial melt and the remnants of volcanoes. These pieces are part of a new body of Ice and Wetlands work that will be shown at the gallery in December 2017. Freeman was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, where she continues to live and work. Her work is included in permanent collections of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France (Paris), the National Media Museum (Bradford, UK), the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Luiciano Benetton Imago Mundi Collection in Italy. Freeman’s photographs have been published by The New York Times Magazine, Art and Antiques, Connoisseur, House & Garden, Elle Decor, and Architectural Digest.

Kenny Morrison is a photographer, director, and cinematographer. He is passionate about making images and storytelling. His work pushes boundaries as he searches for limits to situations. Photographs from Morrison’s Storm series are included in this exhibition, which are specifically inspired by the surreal ambiguity in John Brosio paintings. Morrison resides in New Orleans, a city that embraces and reinforces his craft by allowing him the flexibility and creativity for pursuing the many adaptations of film.

Irby Pace’s work explores void spaces inhabited by disconcerting yet beautiful colorful puffs of smoke. They are rooted in his fascination with negative space and its secondary role in the visual world. In some ways Pace believes the void can represent what is lacking in the human experience. When exploring this concept, he brings empty spaces to the forefront of his photographs, transforming what might normally be seen as an ordinary environment into something extraordinary. Pace was born in Odessa, Texas and currently lives and works in Alabama. He has exhibited nationally and internationally and is represented by Galleri Urbane. His work has been featured in the Huffington Post, Wired Magazine, and many other regional and national publications.

Chuck Ramirez was an artist, graphic designer, and a major force in the San Antonio art community before his untimely death in 2010. He employed the visual and conceptual techniques found in contemporary advertising and package design, isolating and re-contextualizing familiar objects to explore cultural identity, mortality, and consumerism through his photographs and installations. Ramirez’ work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and his works are within many prestigious collections including the San Antonio Museum of Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi; The McNay Art Museum, San Antonio; The European Museum of Photography, Paris; and the AT&T Center Art Collection, among others. The works included in this exhibition are through a collaboration with RH Art, the exclusive representative of the Chuck Ramirez estate.

SurREAL examines these artists' representations of reality as a subjective and malleable state of mind or a fixed truth. Of the works in this exhibition, some artists used the tool of illusionistic representation to subvert reality entirely, while others captured realism; which can also be perceived as surreal.