Echo Decoy Limit
Curated by Christina Wiles
Work by Everything Is Collective (Aaron Hegert, Jason Lukas, Zachary Norman)
January 9 – February 14, 2015
Exhibition Dates: January 9 – February 14, 2015
Opening Reception: January 9, 7:00 – 10:00pm
Artist Talk & Conversation: Saturday, January 23, 6:30 – 8:00pm
Echo Decoy Limit showcases photographs and installations by Everything Is Collective (E.I.C.), the collaborative project of Los Angeles and Chicago-based artists Aaron Hegert, Jason Lukas, and Zachary Norman.
With their Deliberate Operations series, E.I.C. explores two core principles of contemporary image culture: iteration and collaboration. The artists use words (including echo, decoy, and limit) culled from an old military operations handbook, as criteria to guide their image-making. First, Hegert, Lukas, and Norman work individually. Then they share their photographs with each other, making hundreds of subsequent images inspired by the first set of images. Working in isolation and in conversation with each other, their ideas evolve and emerge over time, across various locations, and multiple authors.
The resulting photographs look like they could be illustrations from a physics textbook or evidence from an archeological dig. But further inspection reveals a closer allegiance to the uncanny and the mystical. This clash between the empirical and the magical provokes viewers to attempt to piece together peculiar visual clues, but instead of providing answers, the photographs leave us with an exhilarating sense of wonder and curiosity.
The exhibition at Royal NoneSuch Gallery emphasizes E.I.C.’s collaborative and iterative process. The show includes framed exhibition prints as well as an installation of E.I.C.’s massive self-generated archive of source material, which consists of earlier versions of images. With multiple variations of an idea on view together, we experience the playful process of a group for whom everything is collective.
Artist Bios
Based in Los Angeles and Chicago, Everything Is Collective (E.I.C.) is an ongoing collaboration between three artists: Aaron Hegert, Jason Lukas, and Zachary Norman. Since 2013 the group has worked together on numerous exhibitions, publications, and web-based projects, all of which address contemporary issues in photography and image culture. Their practice is truly collaborative, and all the works they create are attributed to the group as a whole. E.I.C. has exhibited their work around the world including exhibitions at Filter Space in Chicago, Next Art Gallery in Sweden, and the Urban Arts Space at Ohio State University. Their most recent publication Deliberate Operations #3 [Full Empty] has been shortlisted for the Anamorphosis Prize and added to the collection of the MoMA Library.
Curator Bio
Based in Oakland, Christina Wiles was a founding editor of Once Magazine and she is currently a curatorial assistant in photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.