Artist Registry
The White Columns Curated Artist Registry is an online platform for emerging and under-recognized artists to share images and information about their respective practices. The Registry seeks to create a context for artists who have yet to benefit from wider critical, curatorial or commercial support. To be eligible, artists cannot be affiliated with a commercial gallery in New York City.
To apply to the Registry, click here. Join our mailing list here to receive our open call announcement and other programming updates. For any further questions about the Registry, please contact us at registry@whitecolumns.org.
STATEMENT OF WORK
Influenced by my teacher Jed Devine, student of Walker Evans, I began photography as a 'straight' photographer, using the 4x5" view camera to document old storefronts and gas stations. Later I moved onto Streetwork in New York City, followed by Rural Landscapes in southern France where I had relocated in 1996 to France to work for the artist Anselm Kiefer as his photographer and printer.
In 2018 I started digitizing negatives for museums and collections. The use of the scanner sparked a new direction, opening an exploration into many kinds of mark making that could be scanned into digital image files. I also worked in collaging bits of photos, drawings, plastics and ice. I realized that I need to break up photography's clean smooth surface and have my hands, not just my head, involved in the process.
As subject matter receded, an interior landscape surfaced, spawning into my latest photographic series, Data Petals.
Data Petals began with fragments of images and drawings that were submitted to a combination of elements. They were ripped, burned, soaked, and frozen; like DNA molecules degraded and reassembled into new formations; testing their resilience and the number of stories that can be told and retold. As language externalizes our thoughts, these constructions attempt to externalize my thought processes and to transform them into tangible forms.
Additional work can be found on https://www.molsen.space/.
I live and work in NYC.
Margrit Olsen