Rotten Apple (2022) comprised a body of studio portrait work shot over a few years, entirely analog photographs presented in various forms as chromogenic prints, gelatin silver prints, lumen prints, and assemblages. The work centered around analog process and the aesthetic symbolism of iconography and western mysticism. The photographs were paired with a hand-written poem installation, written for the occasion across the large external windows of the gallery space. From outside, the text, a meditation on knowledge and sacred mystery, acted as a heuristic lens with which the images could be seen. Mimicking traditional western sacred spaces, one had to enter into the space to encounter the images unfiltered by textual knowledge. The exhibition text read as follows:
“A rotten apple. A bad seed. The tree of life. Decay. A rebel, incorrigible. An obsession. A symbol—mystery. Redemption, but not yet.
Rotten Apple, a solo exhibition by the artist Jason Contangelo, pairs visual, photographic icons with obscured, poetic text installations to create a space of intertwined madness and sanity. Sacred image and holy text dissociate to a black monolithic void centered in the gallery, itself casting upwards a clue—a hidden meaning, a glimpse of regeneration. With fresh eyes, mystery begins to unravel. Inverted, one sees yet anew.”
Rotten Apple was exhibited at BOX Gallery in Buffalo, NY, in the summer of 2022.