Point of Contact
Agnese Cebere and Erin Langley
January 3 - February 22, 2025
First Friday Opening
Friday, January 3rd
Scalehouse Gallery
5-7PM
Artist Talk
Saturday, January 4th
Scalehouse Gallery
12-1PM
Community Event: Noticing Walk
Saturday, February 22nd
Scalehouse Gallery
1-3PM (ish)
Point of Contact is an exhibition of work by Agnese Cebere and Erin Langley. Through photography and sculpture, they explore themes of landscape and terrain, surface and depth. Situated within the high desert landscapes regional to Bend, Cebere and Langley eschew romantic depictions of this familiar terrain and instead cast their gaze downward: at abandoned campsites, makeshift fire pits, and household refuse. Through image-making and material processes, Point of Contact asks the audience to reconsider their own position in the land in which they live. The exhibition includes photographs by Cebere, all part of the series Desert Shots, taken near Redmond, OR. These images are the product of an investigation of a liminal site of recreation that is also a site of illegal dumping of waste and detritus. Part forensic investigation, part aesthetic intervention, this work underscores the way nature and culture are intertwined in our everyday lives. Langley’s sculptures take as their starting point the notion of the consumer remnant— a cast-off object or material (a scrap of junkmail, a weathered piece of plastic) whose color, shape, or texture provokes an artistic response. The completed sculptures are de-idealized, pseudo-geologic forms that interrogate the perceived division between natural and synthetic, while nodding to the materials and structures in Cebere’s photos. Point of Contact considers surface as both an entry point and final resting place. Through Langley’s active relation between herself and surrounding waste, the overlooked is leveraged to gain new purchase on a smooth, habitual world. Equally, Cebere employs artifice as a revealer of form. The texture of the accumulated surfaces of Langley’s work stands in apparent contrast to the high gloss of Cebere’s photographs. Yet, as objects, both beckon and obscure through shine and iridescence, relying on an in-person experience to access their indeterminacy. What has always been there shimmers anew.
About Agnese Cebere:
Agnese Cebere (b.1989, Riga, Latvia) is an interdisciplinary artist working across
photography, video, performance, and installation. She is concerned with the
philosophical implications of perception and cognition in relation to embodiment and technology, as well as the performativity of the art object in the space of the exhibition and the implementation of the kinaesthetic field of both performer and audience. Whether using costume or camera to enact an altered perception and feel differently, her work often stems from improvisation and explorations of site. Cebere’s work has been included in screenings and exhibitions at Center for Art Research, Eugene, OR; Newledo Exploration Hub, Newport, OR; Carnation Contemporary, Portland, OR; Ditch Projects, Springfield, OR; Petrichor Gallery,
Springfield, OR; Otion Front Studio, Brooklyn, NY; Wassaic Project, NY; and online in Dismal Sessions 001–021 by Most Dismal Swamp, presented by Silicon Valet and New Art City; Flat Journal, and elsewhere. Her writing has been published in HUB – Journal for Research in Art, Design and Society, and Cosmic Bulletin by the Institute of the Cosmos. She has a BA in Intermedia Art from Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland and an MA in Media Studies from The New School, New York. She served as Program Director of Eugene Contemporary Art from 2019–2023 and graduated with an MFA in Art from the University of Oregon in 2022, where she is now an instructor of Art. She is a current member of Ditch Projects in Springfield, OR.
About Erin Langley:
Erin Langley (b. 1986, New Hampshire, USA) is an artist and arts educator based in Springfield, Oregon. Langley’s materially-driven, accretive work explores the porous boundary between the natural and the synthetic. Through methods that span painting, drawing, and sculpture, she interrogates the networks of desire and taste that shape our perceptions of authenticity and artifice, beauty and toxicity. Langley’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States, including at Moscow Contemporary in Moscow, ID; Ditch Projects in Springfield OR; Carnation Contemporary in Portland, OR; Coos Art Museum in Coos Bay, OR; and Bunker Projects in Pittsburgh, PA. She has been an instructor of Art and Art History at the University of Oregon, and her studio practice has been supported by numerous awards and residencies including the Oregon Arts Commission, the Phillip H. Johnson Endowment Fund, the Carlene Ho Award for Excellence in the Arts, and Vermont Studio Center. Langley earned an MFA in Art from the University of Oregon in 2022 and holds a BFA in Painting with a minor in Art History from the University of Montana (2019).