NO ARCHITECTURE, PLLC

176 ELIZABETH STREET, 2ND FLOOR

NEW YORK NY 10012 USA
TELEPHONE +1 646 662 9881
INFO@NOARCHITECTURE.COM
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TRAN S PAR E N CY: ON NATU R E AN D TH E OU TD O OR S.

ON VIEW PRIVATE VIEWING LOCATION

October 5th – July 31 st, 2020 By Appointment The Courtyard House
Aurora, Oregon

NO ARCH ITECTU R E announces a private viewing of TRANSPAR E NCY: ON NATU R E AN D TH E

OUTDOORS, a group exhibition of contemporary photography opened October 5, 2019 with a benefit
reception for the Architecture Foundation of Oregon. Installed at the AIA award-winning Courtyard
House (c. 2013) in Oregon’s acclaimed wine country, the exhibition breaks down the separation between
art, architecture, and nature. Featuring four West Coast contemporary artists who examine their
disciplinary means of production, the exhibition highlights divergent and diverse technologies, from
stereoscopic tintypes to cyanotypes submerged beneath waves, which collectively open new ways of
perceiving the natural world. The exhibition invites visitors to question the role of photography—and
technology at large—in constructing our understandings of place and nature through conservation and
memory.

The exhibition features new and recent works by Alexandra Opie, Catherine Opie, Chelsea Mosher,
and Meghann Riepenhoff. The exhibition has recently been published in Cultured Magazine, Grey,
Dwell, ArchDaily, and Architectural Digest. TRANSPAR E NCY is organized by Andrew Heid of NO
ARCH ITECTU R E, with generous support from Elise Jaffe+Jeffrey Brown, Crozier Fine Arts, and Regen
Projects.
NO ARCHITECTURE, PLLC
176 ELIZABETH STREET, 2ND FLOOR
NEW YORK NY 10012 USA
TELEPHONE +1 646 662 9881
INFO@NOARCHITECTURE.COM

AB OUT TH E ARTISTS

Alexandra Opie

Opie attended Southern Oregon University and School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston where she
received her BA in 1997 and M FA in 2000. Her work has shown in Boston, Chicago, New York, Portland,
San Francisco, Seattle, and St. Louis. Opie teaches photography at Willamette University as the
department chair. She lives and works in Salem, Oregon.

Catherine Opie

One of the most prominent contemporary artists of our time, Opie has had solo shows at the Museum
of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the Walker Center (Minneapolis), and the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum (New York), among many other venues. Opie has taught at Yale University and is currently
professor and head of photography at UCLA. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

Chelsea Mosher

Mosher ’s work has been widely exhibited across the West Coast, and has recently been acquired by the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Having received a BA from Portland State University and
an M FA from California State University, Mosher has served on the faculty at UCLA since 2015. She
lives and works in Long Beach, CA.

Meghann Riepenhoff

Riepenhoff’s work is held in the collections at the High Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts
(Houston), the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), and the Worcester Art Museum.
Additional collections include the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the San Francisco Museum of Modern
Art. Riepenhoff is a 2018-19 Guggenheim Fellow, and is based in Bainbridge Island, WA and San
Francisco, CA.

AB OUT NO ARCH ITECTU R E:

NO ARCH ITECTU R E—NOA is an internationally award-winning practice based in New York City
dedicated to the radical exploration of nature, ecology, and urbanism through innovative architecture.
The office’s expertise is in new forms of organization in architecture and urbanism: from framing how
people live at the scale of a room, to new ways of living convivially and resiliently at the scale of a city.

Andrew Heid is the founding principal of NO ARCH ITECTU R E. Currently architecture editor at Cultured
Magazine, Heid studied architecture at Yale, the Architectural Association, and received his M.Arch from
Princeton. He lives and works between New York City and Oregon.

CONTACT:
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NO ARCH ITECTU R E, 2019
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NO ARCH ITECTU R E, 2019

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1.

Untitled #2
Catherine Opie, 2012
Archival pigment print Catherine Opie
Untitled #2
2012
Edition of 5, 2AP Pigment print
Framed Dimensions:
43 3/4” x 63 3/4”
43 3/4 xx632”/
3/4 x 2 $50,000
Image Dimensions:
framed
inches (111.1 x 161.9 x 5.1 cm)

40 x 60 inches (101.6 x 152.4 cm)

2. Edition of 5, 2 AP
CO 4338
$40,000

Stereoscopic Lichen #01

Alexandra Opie, 2019
Archival pigment print
Edition of 5, 2AP
14 1/2” x 30 1/8”/ $1,200 framed

3.

Stereoscopic Lichen #04

Alexandra Opie, 2019
Archival pigment print
Edition of 5, 2AP
14 1/2” x 30 1/8”/ $1,200 framed
4.

Wonder Box #071 Liriodendron tulipifera (tulip tree) 19x.tif

Alexandra Opie, 2017
Archival pigment print
Edition of 5, 2AP
39 1/8” x 50 1/8”/ $4,000 framed

5.

Wonder Box #200 Acer palmatum (Japanese maple) 15x.tif

Alexandra Opie, 2018
Archival pigment print
Edition of 5, 2AP
27 1/8” x 35 1/8”/ $3,000 framed

6.

Wonder Box #019 Echinocystis lobata (wild cucumber) 11x.tif

2016
Archival pigment print
Edition of 5, 2AP
39 1/8” x 50 1/8”/ $4,000 framed
7.

Wonder Box #202 Polypodium glycyrrhiza (licorice fern) 16x.tif

Alexandra Opie, 2018
Archival pigment print
Edition of 5, 2AP
39 1/8” x 50 1/8”/ $4,000 framed
8.

Wonder Box #198 Acer palmatum (Japanese maple) 36x.tif

2018
Archival pigment print
Edition of 5, 2AP
39 1/8” x 50 1/8”/ $4,000 framed
9.

Wonder Box #210 Loropetalum chinensis (Chinese fringe flower) 16x.tif

2018
Archival pigment print
Edition of 5, 2AP
39 1/8” x 50 1/8”/ $4,000 framed
10.

Wonder Box #107 Avena fatua (common wild oats) 8x

Alexandra Opie, 2018
Archival pigment print
Edition of 5, 2AP
39 1/8” x 50 1/8”/ $4,000 framed
11.

Untitled (Terminal Island 26)

Chelsea Mosher, 2019
Gelatin Silver Print
Edition of 3, 2AP
19” x 24”/ $2,800, $3,300 framed
12.

Untitled (Terminal Island 14B)

Chelsea Mosher, 2019
Gelatin Silver Print
Edition of 3, 2AP
19” x 24”/ $2,800, $3,300 framed
13.

Muybridge Tides #27 (Rapidly Submerging Paper, Vondelpark Pond, Amsterdam, N L, 11.07. 17)
Meghann Riepenhoff, 2017
Unique dynamic cyanotypes
Edition of 1
7 panels, 12” x 9” each, frame: 14” x 70”/ $16,000 framed
ARTIST’S STATE M E NT

Alexandra Opie

In Wonder Box, I am interested in what philosopher Willem Flusser calls the project of photography
itself—to understand the difference between sight and photographic representation, to
anticipate and capture the interaction of light and chemistry. In close studies of plant specimens,
photographed using nineteenth-century wet collodion technology, I create lush, highly detailed
images with evident chemical traces that instill a fresh sense of wonder in the ordinary. When faced
with familiar objects rendered with the intensity of wet collodion at a highly magnified scale, we see
details of the world around us with fresh eyes.

In order to create the studies in this series, I have built large experimental cameras and immersed
myself in antique photographic forms. Wet collodion photographs are notable for the intensity with
which they record details and texture. This effect is due both to the intense quality of fine silver
particles and to the peculiar light sensitivity of wet collodion processes. Unlike modern films or
digital media which have been formulated to capture light as we see it, wet collodion captures light
outside of our visual spectrum. Roughly a third of the light recorded in these images is from the
ultraviolet range, outside what the human eye can see. This yields fascinating visual differences
from our vision and from photographic forms from any other era. Texture is enhanced. Colors that
we would usually experience as light are shifted. Plants take on near-metallic intensity.

Working with wet collodion processing is much more complex and finicky than working with
traditional film. To make each wet collodion image, I prepare an aluminum or glass photographic
plate by coating it with collodion (a mixture of nitrocellulose, ether and alcohol). Once coated, the
plate is immersed in a silver bath in the dark room to become light sensitive, after which it appears
milky-white, and is placed in a light-safe plate holder for transport to the camera. Time becomes
key, as the plate is light sensitive only while it remains wet. The time-window can be as short as a
few minutes or as long as half an hour.

As light hits the plate inside the camera, invisible chemical changes occur, silver metal floating
on nitrocellulose, recording light and time. Once exposed, the plate is returned to the darkroom,
developed, and fixed. Fixing affords one of the most unusual experiences as we watch the
unexposed silver removed and the image ‘clears,’ leaving an apparent positive image suspended on
the blackness of the plate. Watching the process, we see a negative turn into a positive. Each plate
emerges as a unique artifact, and yields an intense materiality. Finally, for extreme magnification,
the photograph on glass or metal is then scanned and enlarged for printing as limited edition
archival pigment prints.
Catherine Opie

Catherine Opie’s complex and diverse body of work is political, personal, and high aesthetic – the
formal, conceptual, and documentary are always at play. Her work consistently engages in formal
issues and maintains a formal rigor and technical mastery that underscores an aestheticized oeuvre.
Visual pleasure can always be found in her arresting and seductive images.

“I have to be interested in art history since so much of my work is related to painting and
photography history. It gives me the ability to use a very familiar language that people understand
when looking at my work and seduce the viewer into considering work that they might not normally
want to look at. It is very classical and formal in so many ways…. In a way, it is elegant in the
seduction I was talking about earlier, that this device really can draw the viewer in through the
perfection of the image. It is like wearing armor for a battle in a way, the battle for people to look
into themselves for the prejudices that keep them from having an open mind.”

Chelsea Mosher/ A Slip & In-Between

Dark, deep, clear, a wet place under the sun. Pulled up from under. Pushed up against a surface. So
many layers, dragging and twisted. Thrust against openings and triangles, control shapes, too tiny
and layered. Twisted fibers, plastic filaments, knots and frayed ends are the trick. Breath collapses
under a dirty, salty sky.

Comprising 10,000 acres of land and sprawling along forty-three miles of coastal waterfront, the
adjoining ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles are the busiest container terminals in the United
States. The piled masses of containers, rows of cranes, and sprawling berths are seductive with all
the scenic tropes of industry. It took me five years of winding through the port to begin making work
in this complicated place, an endeavor I’m still entangled with. There are so many small environs at
work within this landscape, and a marginal fishing industry somehow still remains. These pictures,
from A Slip & In-Between, were made in a small harbor within the port complex, where an aftermath
seems clear at the water ’s edge.

Meghann Riepenhoff

Muybridge Tides
In the 1800’s Eadweard Muybridge changed our understanding of the world around us by using still
photography to illustrate movement. In response to his pivotal work, I rapidly submerge sheets of
cyanotype paper along shorelines, creating a kind of a stop motion record of waves and currents.
#27 is made in Vondelpark in Amsterdam.