Joseph Podlesnik:
The Pain, Boredom, and Euphoria of Looking

Lives, works in Phoenix, AZ
Open May 30, 2023

Artist Exhibition Statement

For the “The Pain, Boredom and Euphoria of Looking” exhibition, my intent is to select color and black and white photographs which involve some personal physical discomfort (while capturing photographs - namely the photograph titled “Cliff Face”), degrees of boredom (tolerating, organizing and capturing a world full of redundant, irrelevant visual information) and the euphoria I experience while capturing photographs and exploring their effects in post- processing. The intent is to arrive at formal order, unity, mood, complexity, ambiguity, and in many cases engage the viewer in frame edge-to-frame edge visual activity.

In addition: For me, the camera lens depicts perspective too easily, which is why I capture and develop photographs which often frustrate readable perspectival space, through glass and light reflections and refractions, bringing the viewer’s eye stubbornly back to the surface of the image, so the mind is not allowed to linger in readable/navigable space too long. For me, the photographic image is not only a window through which to see the visible world, but also a maker of flat surfaces which stunt or block logical space. I see photography and pictures not only as documentation, but as commenting on or reenacting visual perception itself.

- Joseph Podlesnik

The phICA Virtual Exhibitions Initiative is made possible through the generous support of Arizona Commission on the Arts/National Endowment for the Arts, City of Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture, Laurie and Tom Carmody/The Carmody Foundation, Brendan Mahoney and Gordon Street, Bobby Walker and Michael L. Zirulnik, Erin Hubbard, and Ted Decker Catalyst Fund.