First Person Third Person
Lauren Edwards, Christopher Meerdo, and Kate O'Neill

April 27 - May 25, 2014
Opening Reception: Sunday, April 27, 6pm - 9pm

Lease Agreement
3718 Ellerslie Ave.
Baltimore, MD 21218

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First Person Third Person is a three person exhibition of photo-based work by Lauren Edwards, Christopher Meerdo, and Kate O’Neill that explores geography, materiality, and displacement. Each artist’s work varies in process and execution with subject matter ranging from dark landscapes shot by automated highway cameras and ubiquitous sunset images to studio photographs of an isolated object. The variety of subject and form is united by a shared slippage between a first person “I” engagement and third person “he/she/it” removal by dislodging natural locations and man-made objects from their locations of origin and repositioning them to create reverent non-sites. The resulting exhibition seems to emote a hushed, detached presence.

Lauren Edwards (American, b. 1982) lives and works in Chicago, IL. Through an expanded lens of photography, Edwards uses various strategies including installation, projection, and sculpture to create framing devices that question the relationships between experience, perception, and representation. She received her B.S. in Psychology from Northeastern University in 2004 and her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2013. She has exhibited in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York with a recent solo exhibition at Andrew Rafacz Gallery and was a 2014 artist in residence at the Institut für Alles Mögliche residency in Berlin, DE. More of Edwards’ work can be seen at lauren-edwards.com/.

Christopher Meerdo (b.1981) is a Chicago based artist who grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and spent time in post-soviet Lithuania as a teenager. He has survived several near-death experiences including drowning and crashing in an airplane. Meerdo is a recent recipient of an MFA in Photography from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Currently he teaches photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been shown in numerous locations including Reykjavik, Nottingham, Seattle, Toronto, and New York with recent exhibitions at Document, Gallery 400, The Hyde Park Art Center, Roxaboxen and Roots & Culture in Chicago. Meerdo was recently an artist in residence at the SIM Artist’s Residency Program in Reykjavik, Iceland and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the summer of 2013. More of Meerdo’s work can be seen at christophermeerdo.com/.

Kate O’Neill is an artist who lives and works in Chicago.  She has recently exhibited work at LVL3 gallery, EXPO Chicago, SAIC Sullivan Gallery and Johalla Projects. She is editor of Lay and Scatter, a forthcoming online magazine on songs and their permutations, both historic and associative. O'Neill is an instructor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she teaches photography and exploratory research practices. More of O’Neill’s work can be seen at kateoneill.net/.

Lease Agreement is a collaborative curatorial project by artists Adam Farcus and Allison Yasukawa. Set in the living room of the couple’s rental house, Lease Agreement continues in the tradition of apartment gallery exhibition spaces by exhibiting conceptually rigorous, engaging work within the context of a home.