Bortolami Gallery is pleased to present “Negative Film Boxes,” an exhibition of new photographs by Morgan Fisher and his third one-person exhibition at the gallery.

The photographs in the exhibition are exact negatives of the photographs Fisher exhibited at Bortolami in 2011. This simple technical transformation produces images whose identity appears to be unsettled. The film boxes are plainly negatives, yet unlike many negatives they are instantly intelligible. But the backgrounds, of course negatives too, appear to be positives. This is because the backgrounds in the earlier photographs are 18% gray. This gray, a standard in photography, is exactly middle gray, so its negative is identical to its positive. Nothing about the gray in these photographs suggests that it’s a negative, so it reads as the more familiar positive. But if the backgrounds are positive, then so are the boxes, an understanding made likely by their already having the legibility of positives. And as positives the boxes are otherworldly. Adding to the ambiguity, the images are almost without shadows. Shadows in a negative are light rather than dark and so are a giveaway, but only when conspicuous. These several factors result in images whose identity is elusive, suspended.

Morgan Fisher was born in 1942 in Washington, D.C. He studied art history at Harvard College and film in Los Angeles. His early work was in film, and more recently he has made paintings, sculptures, and photographs. Recent one-person exhibitions at public institutions were at the Aspen Art Museum (2013); Generali Foundation, Vienna (2012); Raven Row, London, and Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach (2011); and Portikus, Frankfurt (2009). He lives and works in Los Angeles.