Monica Furmanski

Artwork Information

“Artifact, Along the Columbia River”, 2019

Inkjet photographic print

26.5 x 41"

 $850

“Artifact, Along the Columbia River II”, 2019

Inkjet photographic print

26.5 x 41"

 $850

In my work, I challenge traditional notions about the function of photography. My photographs explore the viewer’s perception and expectations, and can be seen as a revival of how we consider the photographic image, particularly within the context of digital media and its relationship with analog photography. I hope to activate the standard viewer/image relationship, extending the possibilities of photography beyond its traditional application. In my work, I explore the conspicuous elements in a photograph that do not exist in the material world by providing the minimal amount of visual information to the viewer, diluting, and distilling the photographic image. I want the viewer to struggle to observe the visual information, and at the same time confront how one knows something to be true, and what one thinks they expect or understand about a photographic image. I am revisiting the performative ways in which I like to photograph- considering the landscape, travel, time, motion, and memory. I am using the digital camera to capture information that plays with the viewers perception and a line where photography may intersect with other mediums, such as painting and video. Working with video and still images, I am constructing multiple layers of imagery shot at varying exposure settings. I plan on continuing this exploration, and I also plan on integrating analog photography into this process as well – photographing with my medium format camera and then working with the images digitally and in the darkroom. I will continue to challenge traditional notions of photography, working with digital and analog photography, site specific installations, as well as with video.

Artist Statement:

Monica Furmanski, photographer and installation artist, directs the viewer’s experience, blurring the lines between image and reality. In 2002 Monica placed window-sized, slightly out-of-focus transparencies of tropical vistas in the existing windows of a gallery in Pasadena. In 2003 another installation created wall-sized images of landscapes where none existed. These and subsequent installations present a space for the viewer to explore the ambiguities created between the images and the viewers expectations. Cryptofloriography, a series of images created in 2007 in which selected elements of rain forest photos are removed digitally, continue this exploration of visual expectation, forcing the viewer’s engagement. If in her earlier work she was “pushing the image into the viewer’s space,” these more recent works make a space for the viewer to enter into the image. Monica and her husband, FOTM Master Artist Matt Furmanski, operate a gallery in Ventura that highlights the work of emerging, cutting-edge artists.

Artist Bio

Website