Exhibition Dates: May 7 – May 31, 2016
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 7 from 5–9 pm in conjunction with Jammin’ on Julia, presented by ADNO, sponsored by the DDD
Gallery Location: 432 Julia Street, New Orleans, LA 70130
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 am–5 pm
Contact Info: 504.522.1999; arthurrogergallery.com

The Arthur Roger Gallery is pleased to present Night Vision, an exhibition of photographs by Lee Deigaard. The exhibition will be on view at Arthur Roger Gallery, located at 432 Julia Street, from May 7 – May 31, 2016. The gallery will host an opening reception with the artist in attendance, on Saturday, May 7 from 5-9 pm in conjunction with Jammin’ on Julia, presented by ADNO, sponsored by the DDD.

In her first solo exhibition with the gallery, artist Lee Deigaard presents collaborative nocturnal portraits of animal protagonists and the emotional and physical landscapes we mutually inhabit. Circulatory systems, ecological processes of flow, immersion, and convergence inform much of her work, which explores animal autonomy and human trespass.

Using a camera and infrared gadgetry, she becomes the hunter or gatherer – “shooting,” “taking,” or “capturing” her images. She works with known animals, like friends’ and family pets, wielding her handheld camera. With wild animals, inhabiting former farmlands bounded by highways and zones of active hunting, she keeps her distance, learning only what they choose to announce, without informed consent. The movements of deer, wolves, bobcats, rabbits, raccoons, all become performance, changed by our voyeurism. They sense the camera as a set of eyes and become poised, ready to jump. Glowing among the bushes and trees, they appear in stark contrast to the dark environments, awakening the sense of being seen in the viewer.

The small- to medium-scale, matte-finish images are presented climbing the dark gray walls of the gallery’s New Media Room.

Lee Deigaard graduated from Yale University with a major in fine arts and earned graduate degrees from the University of Michigan School of Art and Design and from the University of Texas at Austin where she held a Michener Fellowship in Creative Writing. In 2012, she won the Clarence John Laughlin Award for photography administered by the New Orleans Photo Alliance, and First Prize at the Southern Open at the Acadiana Center for the Arts for her video installation. Her Memorial to Topsy the elephant is on permanent display at the Coney Island Museum in Brooklyn, NY. She was a 2009 recipient of the Louisiana Division of the Arts Artist Fellowship, a 2009-10 artist-in-residence at Louisiana ArtWorks and is a member of the artist collective The Front. In 2013, she had solo shows at the Alexandria Museum of Art, the Acadiana Center for the Arts, the Contemporary Arts Center, and the University of New Orleans. In 2014, she had a solo exhibition at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. Lee Deigaard has lived and worked in New Orleans since 2002.