Opening: "The Numbers Behind"

Michael Dax Iavocone

Another opportunity for DC-area readers: Michael Dax Iavocone's new show opens at flashpoint gallery tomorrow (Saturday), July 12, 6-8pm.

From the gallery press release (pdf):

Artist Michael Dax Iacovone investigates and chronicles his familiar DC environs using mathematical algorithms to govern the way in which he experiences space. Using these formulas, Iacovone creates a blueprint to follow, film and photograph the DC area. Iacovone's solo exhibition at the Gallery at Flashpoint, The Numbers Behind, explores spaces and image-making in a new and mechanical way and is on view from July 12 through August 23, 2008. Iacovone's installation will consist of large-scale black and white photographs, maps that show the specific path that the artist follows and videos that track the artist's execution of the formulas.


Once a formula is devised for a photograph, Iacovone uses a cheap, plastic Holga camera and shoots from the chest rather than looking through the viewfinder in order to avoid making any aesthetic, compositional choices. Iacovone, rather than using Photoshop or manipulating the images post-production, layers and overlaps the images inside the camera, across the length of the negative which result in long, ethereal panoramas. The image, so sharply defined in the mapping used to document the spaces, becomes vaporous and disorienting in the resulting photographs.

Brooklyn Bridge with Process (detail)
Mike Iacovone