BIG RAMP is pleased to present a virtual artist talk this Saturday, June 1st entitled, How to Watch a Solar Eclipse, by exhibiting artist Jason Lazarus. This talk comes in conjunction with Jason’s project, April 8th,2024, which is currently on view as a part of BIG RAMP’s exhibition, The Magic of the Sun Playing with the Moon.
Lazarus’s talk will occur at 06.01.2024, 2:30pm EST via zoom link
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/72189986942?pwd=5buHmZPbaNzLnBa01TMzWGa89laZRF.1
Meeting ID: 721 8998 6942 Passcode: LWKs03
After Lazarus’s artist talk there will be a brief Q&A session moderated by BIG RAMP co-director and exhibition curator Michelle Anne Harris.
Please see suggested reading, "Total Eclipse", an essay by Annie Dillard.
Jason Lazarus is an artist exploring vision and visibility. His work includes a range of fluid methodologies: original, found and appropriated images, text-as-image, photo-derived sculptures made collaboratively with the public, live archives, LED light images, and public submission repositories among others. This expanded photographic practice seeks new approaches of inquiry, embodiment, and bearing witness through both individual and collective research. His work has been covered in outlets including Artforum, The New York Times, Frieze, The Guardian, Hyperallergic, Los Angeles Times, NPR, The Washington Post, CNN, and Vice Magazine, and written about by a range of artists and scholars including Martha Rosler, Hamza Walker, Michelle Grabner, Abigail Solomon Godeau, Seph Rodney, Tina Kukielski, Darby English, Christopher Knight, Carmen Winant, Seph Rodney, Ariana Reines, and Lori Waxman among others. Selected exhibition venues include SF MOMA, Art Institute of Chicago, MASS MoCA, MCA Chicago, George Eastman Museum, Queens Museum of Art, High Museum of Art, Renaissance Society, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Ryan Lee Gallery NYC, Exgirlfriend Gallery Berlin, Contemporary Jewish Museum SF, Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Columbia University, Stadtgalerie Kiel 9, Kunstlerhaus Behanien Berlin, Gallery 400, bitforms Gallery NYC, Blaffer Art Museum Houston, Biennial of Photography and Visual Arts Belgium, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography. Selected public lectures include Yale University, International Center of Photography, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; George Eastman Museum NY, the Art Institute of Chicago, University of California Berkeley, and Artists/Designs/Citizen (US Pavilion, 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale) among others. Selected permanent collections include the Whitney Museum of American Art, Art Institute of Chicago, SFMOMA, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, High Museum of Art, Milwaukee Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, and the Ringling Museum of Art among others. Lazarus is also Co-director of Coco Hunday, an artist-run exhibition space in Tampa, FL anchored by solo exhibitions, artist-lectures, and new scholarship on emerging and mid-career artists; Director, PDF-OBJECTS, a nomadic sculpture library featuring over 100 international artists’ chosen readings sculpturally paired with everyday objects; Co-founder of #firstdayfirstimage, a national campaign that asks artist-educators to center voices long underrepresented in curricula starting with the first image shown to students on the first day of class; and Co-founder of Chicago Artist Writers, a platform that invites artists and art workers to write traditional and experimental criticism. Currently, Lazarus is an Associate Professor of Art and Art History at the University of South Florida.
Michelle Anne Harris is an interdisciplinary teaching artist and co-director at Big Ramp, whose work incorporates printmaking, photography, painting, book arts poetry and sculpture. She received her Master of Fine Arts Degree in printmaking from Cranbrook Academy of Art and her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in photography and art education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, and the Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland; with a solo exhibition opening in 2025 at Information Space in Philadelphia, PA.