Wechsler/
Part 1: Redo

De Soto Gallery presented Part 1: Redo, an exhibition of photographs by Sadie Wechsler. This marked the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery. She was in attendance for the opening night reception.

Wechsler’s fantastical images construct an off-kilter world that leans toward extremes. Part 1: Redo follows disparate threads of imagined futures, sliding in and out of the artificial and the manipulated. Her images are made using a range of techniques—straight photography, digital collage, rephotographed photomontage, and layered, 3D cut-paper composites. While disjointed in subject and approach, they share an immediacy and hyperawareness of their existence in a post–Web 2.0 world. It’s a feedback loop — us watching ourselves watching ourselves.

For Wechsler, the fluidity of fact and fiction in the retelling of our stories is where truth begins to surface. Photography, with its ability to fictionalize the real, is a native language for navigating this unstable terrain. Multiplicity is essential; memory, identity, and experience are constantly reworked. In Part 1: Redo, nothing is quite right—but nothing is entirely wrong either. If, within the realm of images, we’re free to rewrite reality, then Wechsler invites us to do so with wonder, disillusion, and a healthy dose of humor.

Sadie Wechsler (b. 1985, Seattle, Washington) received her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2013. Her work has been exhibited across the United States, including exhibitions at Newspace Center for Photography in Portland and Aperture Gallery in New York. She was awarded the Betty Bowen Award by the Seattle Art Museum in 2015 and is based in Seattle.