Contact Photo is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Sean Fryxell, a street photographer and graphic designer based in Beacon, New York. His show, Attention Economy, opens on Saturday, August 24th, from 5 – 8 pm and will be on view through September 14th, 2024.
Attention Economy presents Fryxell’s recent photographic and graphic design works, featuring a site-specific installation of collected materials and video works integrated with his photographs. To accompany this exhibition, Fryxell’s new zine, LOUD.exe, will be released during the opening reception, with AI-generated sound pieces playing in the background.
In this multidisciplinary exhibition, Fryxell explores the ongoing relationship between technology and the desires of photographs by altering the context in which images exist and circulate.
The installation begins with 16 Archival Pigment Inkjet Prints on the gallery walls, selected from his extensive street photography archive. These photographs have previously existed only as digital imagery on the artist’s social media accounts, where a flood of images competes for attention in the contemporary internet environment. Now transformed into prints, they serve as the anchors of the entire exhibition.
Surrounding the 16 prints, Fryxell’s graphic design works are arranged to create a larger constellation. He infuses the aesthetics of pixelated, low-resolution graphics from 1990s computers and video games into his photographs.
Fryxell’s photographs undergo another phase of transformation in the two video works displayed in the gallery. The first video is projected across an entire wall, causing the prints on that wall to shift meaning over time. The second video is shown on the screen of a vintage LCD Monitor, placed on a desk cluttered with strange, failed retro gadgets from the 1990s and 2000s that the artist has collected over the years. This desk is staged as if someone from the past had just used it and left it untouched.
In these works, Fryxell’s photos are remixed and animated into time-based art, which slowly becomes overwhelmed by spam pop-ups, eventually crashing into a black screen after an error message. The ominous yet playful trajectory of the videos, played in a loop, is amplified by their physical context: a careful installation of discontinued technology.
By layering complex and humorous multi-sensory experiences, Fryxell creates and re-creates a compelling narrative of anxiety and nostalgia surrounding the contemporary conditions of photography.
Sean Fryxell is a street photographer based in Beacon, New York. His work focuses on capturing raw and unfiltered moments, primarily throughout New York City. Fryxell’s images tell stories of the human condition and offer a glimpse into the lives of New Yorkers, preserving fleeting moments that define life in the present day. Fryxell is a member of the New York City Street Photography Collective (NYC-SPC).
Attention Economy
Solo exhibition by Sean Fryxell
On View: August 24 - September 14, 2024
Opening Reception & Zine Release:
August 24, 2024 5-8pm
Location: Contact Photo (51 Porter Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11237)