Los Angles Accumulation, 1/2, 2016-14, Dye Sublimation print, 55 x 45 inches

By using repetitive images with various rivers of color and form washing over them, there is a sense that nothing is static. This photograph both erases and combines past and present in the multi-faceted approach Graf utilizes in his practice. Some works are initially shot on color film, printed in the darkroom, then scanned, printed as digital negatives and eventually printed on analog darkroom paper. This process creates a sense of things decaying and a beautifully exhausted print remains. Some works take years to come to fruition; a photo taken on a phone is cropped, made into a pattern, and printed on fabric. Various other “debris images” as the artist calls them is which the piece, “Los Angeles Totem”, 2016-24 was eventually patterned into its current form.

Bryan Graf (b. 1982) lives and works in Portland, Maine. He received an M.F.A from Yale University in 2008 and a B.F.A. from the Art Institute of Boston in 2005. His first solo museum show, Moving Across the Interior, was on view at the ICA@MECA in Portland, Maine through April 2014. Grafʼs work has recently featured in Second Nature: Abstract Photography Then and Now at the Decordova Sculpture Park and Museum, and The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation at the Loeb Art Center at Vassar College. Grafʼs work has appeared in numerous publications, including Blind Spot and The New York Times. He is the subject of three monographs: Wildlife Analysis (Conveyor, 2013), Moving Across the Interior (ICA@MECA, 2014), and Prismatic Tracks (Conveyor, 2014).