Barry Underwood

Orange Stream, Barry Underwood

“These images are long exposure photographic documentations of full-scale installations that are built on-site in specific landscapes. Approached through a theatrical sensibility, the pieces intermingle concepts of contemporary painting, cinema and land art. Issues of illusion, imagination, narrative, are investigated, as is the potential of the ordinary to be transformed into the extraordinary through light and composition” – Barry Underwood

Barry Underwood is an Assistant Professor and Head of the Department of Film, Video, and Photographic Arts at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Barry has received two Bachelor of Arts degrees from Indiana University Northwest in 1990 in Theatre and 1992 in Photography. He earned his Masters in Photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1995. In 2007 Barry participated in a thematic residency Imaginary Places, at Banff Center for the Arts, Banff, Alberta, Canada. In 2008 he participated in an Artists’ Enclave residency at I-Park in East Haddam, Connecticut.

Trace Blue, Barry Underwood

Last summer he participated in a residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California. His work has been exhibited internationally: Annual International Los Angeles Photographic Art Exposition, in Santa Monica, California, Photo Miami 2007 in Miami, Florida, and most recently Altered Landscape, a two person exhibition at Summit Gallery, in Banff, Alberta, Canada. Recently, Barry’s work was recently exhibited at NEXT 2009 The Invitational Exhibition of Emerging Art and Scope in Basel, Switzerland, and Earth Engines a two-person exhibition at Johansson Projects in Oakland, California. His work is included in several corporate and private collections. Upcoming exhibitions include Staged a group exhibition at Skew Gallery in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in January 2010, and a solo exhibition at Skew Gallery in May 2010.

“These images are documentations of dioramas and full-scale installations that are built on-site in the landscapes.  I use these as the means to explore issues of illusion, imagination, narrative, and the potential of the ordinary. I approach my photographic work with a theatrical sensibility that permits me to intermingle issues that arise from contemporary painting, cinema and land art. The resulting images are surreal images, given that they result from this cross-pollination between traditional photography and theater.   Light and color are used as subjective tools, affecting the perception of space while de-familiarizing common objects.  In this work, therefore, illusionistic space collapses while the lights that I install appear as intrusions and interventions as they contrast with the inherent atmospheric properties of natural light. This combination renders the forms in the landscape abstract” – Barry Underwood

Trace Yellow, Barry Underwood

Barry Underwood, currently lives in Cleveland, Ohio USA. MFA in Photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA
BA in Theatre and Photography Indiana University Northwest, Gary, Indiana, USA

See his website here