Photographs by:Alexis Martino, and
Brittany Markert
Opening: December 8, 2022, 5-7pm
Gryder Gallery
Surrealism in photography: a woman’s perspective.
Photographs by PhotoNOLA prize winner from 2022,
Brittany Markert and Alexis Martino.
“Beauty will be convulsive or not at all … Convulsive beauty will be veiled-erotic, fixed-explosive, magic-circumstantial or not at all.”
— André Breton
Referencing Andre Breton’s definition of “Convulsive Beauty,” in the final sentence of his novel Nadja Convulsive Beauty denotes artworks of a medicinal nature that attempt to heal the wounded psyches of the viewer by revealing through symbols hidden truths of the unconscious. It is another term for the marvelous, the great talismanic concept at the heart of Surrealism.
Convulsive Beauty is told through the lens of two contemporary female photographers, Alexis Martino and Brittany Markert, the works in this exhibition echo Surrealism’s dedication to exhibiting bold upheavals in psychological coherence at the level of the individual mind. Like the Surrealists of the early 20th century, these female photographers experiment with perspectives, scale, composition, and alternative mediums and angles to generate surprising views of the world that the eye might not