The “open theme | unmoored” exhibition, juried by Debra Klomp Ching, was in the online gallery from September 27  to November 7, 2024.  Debra selected forty seven images from forty one artist for the exhibition. Stephanie Duprie Routh’s image “Phoenix #33: Gaga Floating in the Metaverse” received the Juror’s Award. Laurent Delhaye’s image “The Last Supper” received the Director’s Award.

Juror’s Statement

The premise of a call for art’s theme being open is wonderfully refreshing. That said, a theme or curatorial premise, also provides the benefit of parameters, and the possibility of more easily locating a thread, to pull selections together into a cohesive exhibition or showcase. For A Smith Gallery, the open call was coupled with the word unmoored—delightfully imaginative, if not taken literally.

To be unmoored is to be unattached, to be loosened and freed from something—set free. Within the context of a call for contemporary photographs, this one word reminded me of key moments in photography’s histories, when expectations of the medium were challenged with new visions; and when individual artists achieved something so remarkable with it (the photograph), that their photographic creations altered the course of our appreciation and understanding of photography as a whole.

The photographs were selected within this context—a visual and narrative representation of breaking free, and challenges to the status quo in the treatment and use of the photographic medium.

The Juror’s Award was bestowed upon Phoenix #33: Gaga Floating in the Metaverse, by Stephanie Duprie Routh. Narratively, it’s a curious photograph, that isn’t a quick read.

It depicts a figure contained within a net-like shroud, looking toward something—to what, the viewer doesn’t know. A hand is lifting this shroud away, or perhaps positioning it in place. One might question, is this a type of birth, a sign of death, or something in-between and undefined, as alluded to in the title? The physicality of space hovers between our understanding of the real world and something else. It’s a portrait, but it’s not so much about the person depicted or mentioned in the title. I read the image, not as a reference to popular culture, but pointing to an undefined place in time and space.

This slippage in meaning, is what makes it such a curious and interesting photograph. Perhaps in a month or two I’ll read it very differently …

Debra Klomp Ching
Co-owner, Director of Klompching Gallery
New York, New York
October, 2024

link to online exhibition