LIGHT SLIP: ARCHIVE, ABSTRACTION, & PHENOMENA

Filter Photo is pleased to present _Light Slip: Archive, Abstraction, and Phenomena_, a two-person exhibition by Sonja Thomsen and Aaron R. Turner. The works on view explore the boundaries of the photographic image, sculpture, space, geometric abstraction, and history. Sonja Thomsen's interdisciplinary practice places photography at its core, expanding the medium beyond its traditional boundaries to harness light as both medium and metaphor. Her work transforms photographic thinking into immersive installations that blur boundaries between image, sculpture, and architecture, inviting audiences to question how they see and understand the world. Working at the intersection of feminist theory and scientific inquiry, she employs photographic processes to center matrifocal networks and choreograph space for wonder. Thomsen responds specifically to photographers Lucia Moholy and Hazel Larsen Archer, visionary women who shaped photographic practices at the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College. Her work challenges conventional understandings of photographic Modernism by delving into photography's history to construct creative matrilineages. Through photography, Thomsen illuminates the overlooked histories of women photographers, weaving these narratives into contemporary conversations about image-making, gender, and knowledge production. Through his series _Black Alchemy_, Aaron R. Turner is primarily concerned with constructing images that address abstraction, history, the pictorial aspects of blackness as material, surveillance, artificial intelligence, the archive, the discursive enterprise, and the artists' role in the studio space. _Black Alchemy_ provides a lens through which he sees the world while simultaneously considering the past, present, and future. He uses light in combination with geometric abstraction painting to shift questions of identity, the historical narrative, and the discourse of photography. Turner's work is also grounded in a photographic perspective and the use of the archive image as a material device, staging intuitive scenes using projections, printed matter, an array of papers cut and strewn, and various mechanical apparatus used in photographic production. He focuses on imagery related to black historical figures, such as Frederick Douglas, who are often juxtaposed with images from various archives. Through his staged manipulations that play heavily with light as material, Turner obscures, loosens, and complicates our view of his subjects, creating pieces that resist graspability yet imply an attempt at resurfacing and recalibrating. Thomsen and Turner both build intuitive installations in response to space. They use glass, mirrors, metallic surfaces, fabric texture, and light projection that shift with viewers' movement, creating dynamic environments that resist fixed interpretation.