OPUS Projects is pleased to present +7 – 49 Collective’s first cross continental collaborative exhibition at OPUS Project Space – Conceptual Parallax, at 526 West 26th Street #705, October 3 – 25, 2013. Gallery hours are Fridays, 12-6 pm, and by appointment. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, October 3, 6-8pm.

 

Mark Parsons and Mike Johnson met over 20 years ago as undergraduate students at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Though the focus of their artwork was quite different they maintained a competitive and friendly relationship. After graduating they parted ways to pursue their individual goals. Mike went on to receive his MFA and then lectured at the Academy of Fine Art and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia as a Fulbright Scholar. After teaching at Baylor University and the University of Delaware, Mike landed in Seattle where he currently resides. Mark spent 3 years sailing around the world on a boat he rebuilt by hand prior to receiving his MFA at Cornell University. He then relocated to New York City, accepting teaching positions at Hunter College and Pratt Institute.

 

For 20 years they worked independently. A significant point was reached when, by coincidence, Mike had an exhibition in Seattle titled “You Are Here,” and Mark had a concurrent exhibition in New York titled, “Here: NSEW.” Both exhibitions were founded upon the graphic quality of line generated by moving through specific geographic territories. This unlikely confluence sparked a newfound curiosity in each other’s work.  Acknowledging their historical differences, the two artists discovered they shared conceptual interests and subsequently launched the -7+49 Collective. Conceptual Parallax is their first show as the -7+49 Collective. While working from extreme longitudinal points, they defined a set of rules and a sequence of operation by which they would generate artwork from opposite ends of the country.

 

Over the course of the last twelve months, the two artists converged in New York and Seattle in an effort to justify the 49 longitudinal degree and 7 latitudinal degree difference between their respective studios. Portions of each trip and the movement in and around the areas where the two artists live and work were utilized to generate the work seen in this exhibition.  Mapping is a merging of the objective reporting of information and the selective - and therefore subjective - inclusion or exclusion of relevant information.  Also subjective is the physical framework through which information is presented.  Therefor mapping is the practice of expressing relationships between areas of identified significance,  Parallax is the use of triangulation to perceive depth of space, or distance.  Conceptual Parallax is an exhibition utilizing time and distance to inform a read of history, space, movement, and emotional environment. The work counter poses the rigor and precision of advanced technologies against the subjectivity of mapping as a means to generate the presented objectified conditions of relationships between salient places and events.