Frank James Meuschke | Don't Go Into The Light

Absorbing the emotive intent of Pictorialist imagery, while skirting its romantic perimeter, he places us on a trajectory toward sublime foreboding and the unknown. 

His photography's blurring, or its fog, dislocates the categorical sites of ecological, public, or personal importance into uncertain territories. Fog is a perceptual threshold between the expected and the unknown, a destroyer of horizons, orientation, and destinations. Standing at this threshold, are we haunted by nature that never was and a future already destroyed?

The fog in Meuschke's photographs is created by light passed through a membrane of polyethylene sheeting placed between the lens and his subject. This veil of plastic points to our current environmental predicament and implicates our responsibility for it. That same polyethylene transmits yet diffuses light, creates and conceals the landscape, and ultimately dissolves the symbolic power of idealized nature into a disorienting landscape of eerie beauty. 

About the Artist

Frank James Meuschke maintains a multidisciplinary landscape-focused practice out of his Minnesota studio at the western edge of Hennepin County. He has exhibited with Mills Gallery, Boston, Museum of the City of New York, VCU Fine Arts Gallery, Portland Museum of Art, Socrates Sculpture Park, among others. Residencies attended include MacDowell, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and Henry Street Settlement. Meuschke is a recipient of a 2018, 2021, and 2022 Minnesota State Arts Board grants, Stobart Foundation Grant, and Socrates Emerging Artist Fellowship.

Gallery Hours

Saturday and Sunday from 12-4 PM or by appointment, masking is required