Samaras, Haser, Becker / Photo LA
BARKER HANGER | JANUARY 31 - FEBRUARY 2, 2019
For Photo LA 2019, De Soto Gallery presented works by Connie Samaras, Alma Haser, and Jonas N.T. Becker, each reimagining the natural world through speculative futures and surreal interventions.
Connie Samaras’ The Past Is Another Planet, created in response to an invitation from the Huntington Library to honor Octavia E. Butler, merges botanical landscapes with artifacts from Butler’s archives. Using multi-exposure large-format photography, Samaras weaves fragments of Butler's notes into ethereal vignettes, blending past and present to evoke Afro-futuristic worlds and cyclical histories.
Alma Haser’s Pseudo examines the fragility of truth in an era of “fake news.” Her still lifes of houseplants, staged like botanical specimens, are dissected and reassembled in surreal montages. Layers are carved out, replaced, and re-photographed, distorting conventional notions of authenticity.
Also on view, Cosmic Surgery envisions a speculative future where "cosmic surgery" is used for mood enhancement, aesthetic alteration, and surveillance evasion. Haser’s origami-inspired portraits depict futuristic facial implants, suggesting a hybrid of nature and technology.
Jonas N.T. Becker’s Holographic Mountain presents a fictional environmental startup proposing holography to restore landscapes destroyed by mountaintop removal mining. Part of his larger installation Please Enjoy…, Becker's work mimics corporate language to critique ecological destruction masked as innovation.
Connie Samaras (b. Albuquerque, New Mexico) has exhibited at the New Museum and the Armory Center for the Arts. She is a recipient of grants from Creative Capital, the Warhol Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Alma Haser (b. 1989, Black Forest, Germany) has exhibited extensively in Europe and the United States. She won the Magenta Foundation’s Bright Spark Award for Cosmic Surgery and was shortlisted for the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize.
Jonas N.T. Becker (b. 1982, Morgantown, West Virginia) has held solo exhibitions at Actual Size Los Angeles, Craft & Folk Art Museum Los Angeles, Shulamit Nazarian, and the Lancaster Museum of Art & History.
