Artists Reception:  August 3rd | 6pm–8pm 

INSTITUTE OF  advanced  UNCERTAINTY is pleased to present Sight Specific, a group exhibition of photographs and documentary film by Matthew Brown, Adam Donnelly and David Janesko. 

Sight Specific expands upon the traditional narrative of landscape photography and considers how a place and its materials dictate a photographic outcome. These works explore what can happen in going beyond looking, immersing oneself in an environment, and making art with - not about - the landscape.  

Matthew Brown’s series includes his early abstractions of nature, as well as new work creating multiple exposures in-camera. By marrying photographs together permanently on film, Brown upends the idea of the individual photograph standing on its own and forces the landscapes to be intertwined. While some images turn out chaotic and filled with detail, others end up dreamlike, leaving the viewer unsure where one picture starts and the other ends. 

Adam Donnelly and David Janesko are exhibiting work from their collaborative series, Site Specific Cameras. The duo began the project in 2012 with the goal of answering the question: Can a camera be fabricated using only materials found in a landscape? Since then, Donnelly and Janesko have spent years using their process to catalog the California landscape building cameras on shorelines, in redwood forests, and on mountainsides. In 2016, they set out to transect the Rio Grande Rift Valley. They constructed Site Specific Cameras in each of the varying landscapes within the valley to produce a larger picture of the rift and the landscapes as a whole.   

The exhibition also includes the premier of Matthew Brown’s documentary film about Site Specific Cameras, focused on Donnelly and Janesko’s work in the Rio Grande Rift Valley.  The film will be on view in the Media Gallery for the exhibition’s entirety. 

Matthew Brown is an artist and teacher who lives in Berkeley, CA. He received a BFA in Film from the University of Colorado. In addition to photography, Matthew works as a freelance video editor and filmmaker. Selected Exhibitions include the Denver International Film Festival, Frameline International Film Festival, Outcast International Film Festival, Flatland Gallery, Another Cafe, and Looking Glass Photo.  

Adam Donnelly is an artist and educator who recently moved from Oakland, CA to New York City. He received a BA in English from the University of Delaware and an MFA in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute. His work focuses on DIY and unique photographic based processes and he has exhibited on both coasts. He was a 2014 artist-in-residence at Rayko Photo Center with David Janesko and was an exhibiting artist in the Digital Nature 2019 exhibition, which was supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. Selected exhibitions include San Cruz Museum, Alter Space, San Francisco, Royal NoneSuch, Oakland, Creative Center for Photography, Los Angeles, and Flatland Gallery, Houston, TX.  

David Janesko lives and works in Houston, Texas. He received a BS in Geosciences from Penn State University and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Janesko is the current curator at Flatland Gallery and is represented by Gray Contemporary in Houston, TX. He has participated in artist-in-residence programs at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Santa Fe Art Institute, Jentel and Rayko Photo Center with Adam Donnelly.  

INSTITUTE OF advanced UNCERTAINTY is a program of Five Arts Foundation, a 501(c)(3) based in San Francisco. 

Gallery hours: Tuesdays through Saturdays, 12:30 pm to 5:30 pm, or by appointment.