PYRO Gallery Presents

C.J. Pressma’s retrospective exhibit at Pyro Gallery in September features black and white photographs, collages of large, digitally created images, and two quilts. A highly acclaimed photographer and multi-media artist, Pressma has produced a large body of work that incorporates his photographs layered with manipulated imagery to create unique photo-montages. He described his retrospective exhibit as a “group of images celebrating the major influences on my work which is a search for open-ended visual metaphors.” The show reflects every phase of Pressma’s long photographic career.
 

Peter Morrin, former director of the Speed Art Museum and an art critic and consultant, described this unique show as providing “portals to a variety of visual and verbal associations and personal themes of abandonment, ritual, and remembrance.” Morrin added that the show also focuses on dissent “with affirmations of counter-culture shown through photos of street graffiti and anti-establishment imagery depicting moral authority vs. governmental authority.”
Pressma, who has been a professional multi-media artist and photographer since 1972, describes his work now as “basically visual poetry.” He began combining digital imagery with his photographs in the early 1980s, and then was able to use the electronic technology to augment his fading eyesight while integrating the analog images with the digital.