Franklin Stage Company Presents Photographs by Wijnanda Deroo

The Franklin Stage Company is honored to present the first art show of their 22nd season, Wijnanda Deroo: Photographs, generously supported by the Erna McReynolds & Tom Morgan Artists in Collaboration Fund.

The exhibit, part of the 23nd Annual Stagecoach Run Art Festival, opens with a reception Saturday, July 7th from 3:00 - 5:00 pm at FSC's historic home, Chapel Hall. The show features a number of large format photographs of the artist's recent work.

Ms. Deroo's images invite the viewer to partake in the intricate relationship between architecture and nature, between history and time, and between memory and place.

What makes these photographs so arresting is that there are almost never people to be seen in them. Yet the viewer is struck with the strong sense that someone has just left the room, or perhaps someone is about to enter. These images can be regarded as portraits, not in the traditional sense, but rather, portraits of intimate surroundings.

Deroo achieves a profound meditation on all of her themes by the masterful use of natural lighting, enigmatic compositions and rejection of staging and image manipulation.

Artistic Directors Patricia Buckley and Leslie Noble we're struck by the artist's evocative sense of place. "How fitting that her photographs are displayed in our theater," said Buckley. "Theaters are places of memory and possibility," added Noble, "where time is malleable, and past, present and future can exist in the same moment."

Wijnanda Deroo was born in the Netherlands in 1955. She received a Liberal Arts Degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Arnhem, where she later became a professor. Originally visiting New York City on sabbatical in 1988, she found herself a year later to be the recipient of an artist residency at P.S.1. Since then she has divided her time between Amsterdam, Delaware County, and New York.

Ms. Deroo's photographs are in collections worldwide, among them New York's Museum of Modern Art, Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, and the Museum of the Jewish Diaspora in Tel Aviv. She is represented by the Robert Mann Gallery in New York.

The show opens Saturday, July 7 with a reception from 3-5 pm at Chapel Hall, 25 Institute Street, Franklin, NY. Admission is free. For more info, visit: www.franklinstagecompany.org or 607-829-3700.

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