Barry Underwood's large super-saturated color prints are striking at first glance. In fact, a fiction is being created here with light, color, and framing, pulling the viewer into a new, somewhat mythical environment. Issues relating to contemporary painting and film also come into play as the artist considers illusion, imagination, and narrative, the potential of the ordinary transformed into the extraordinary through light and composition. Underwood's surreal photographs are a cross-pollination between static and performing art. The photographs suggest a happening-a secret unnatural moment in the natural world-that the artist has chanced upon and been able to record. When thinking about the genesis of these works, Underwood drew less from the realm of the fantastic and instead looked to his immediate surroundings to draw inspiration, fusing autobiography with fiction.
Barry Underwood is currently an Assistant Professor and Chair of the Department of Film, Video, and Photographic Arts at the Cleveland Institute of Art. His work has been exhibited nationally and is included in several corporate and private collections. His work was recently on a thematic residency "Imaginary Places" at the Banff Centre, exhibited a solo exhibition "Light" at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, in Grand Rapids, Michigan and was in a group exhibition "Side by Side" the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland.
