Devon Oder
Breaking Light

September 26–November 1, 2008


On the occasion of our inaugural exhibition, Fourteen30 Contemporary is pleased to present Breaking Light, an exhibition by Los Angeles based artist Devon Oder. Oder’s recent work explores both the technical processes and the phenomenological experience of the viewer in relation to the medium of photography.

Through imagery fluctuating between realism and abstraction, each photograph distorts the landscape, presenting a moment in time ungraspable. Without attempt to clarify but striving to further mystify, Oder creates sublime terror and foreboding through ravishing landscapes, each apocalyptic and majestic; glowing lights in sky, adumbrated trees, and barren forests.

Through the manipulation of Polaroid film, in addition to techniques including multiple exposures, infrared film and lighting filters, Oder allows for a new visual experience to be explored within the old. The exhibition title, Breaking Light, refers to both the literal breaking of the Polaroid emulsion to produce chemical cracks on the surface of the photographs, and the breaking of light itself, through trees, prisms, and lenses.

Devon Oder is a graduate of the MFA program at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Her work was included in the group exhibition, Space as a Space, at Bonelli Contemporary in Los Angeles earlier this year. Breaking Light is Oder’s first solo exhibition. 

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Also opening September 26 is the specialty art bookstore housed within Fourteen30 Contemporary. Featured publishers will include Museum Paper (Stockholm), 2nd Cannons (Los Angeles), Nieves (Zurich), and JRP|Ringier (Zurich.)