KUMUKUMU is pleased to present Off the Grid, a show of photographs by Andrew A. Lucas, Luis Mallo, Michel Campeau, and Troy Paiva.

The last ten years have witnessed the development and deployment of advanced imaging technologies once available only to governments and multinational corporations at great expense. Through programs like Google Map’s satellite and street views, vast portions of the world are suddenly visible, impassively documented. Instant availability is achieved through relentless cataloguing, but close study is impossible.

The photographers in Off the Grid undermine this undifferentiated mass of images, introducing nuance and difference into supposedly comprehensive visual archives. Andrew A. Lucas and Troy Paiva emphasize history in their work, venturing into abandoned factories, industrial wastelands, and highway rest stops to revisit abandoned models of industrial and utopian thinking. They chronicle the human histories of their sites, and literalize Roland Barthes’ experience of viewing photograph, crafting “a catastrophe which has already occurred.”

Luis Mallo investigates furtive zones within corporate and bureaucratic buildings, exploring storage rooms, research labs, and construction or demolition sites – functional spaces that are often passed through rather than studied. Obscuring direct views behind fences or through netting, he forces spectators to look more carefully and navigate the image more closely. Viewership becomes an intimate act. Michel Campeau, meanwhile, engages other areas of production usually concealed from public view, documenting the darkrooms and studios of analog photographers, which, with the ascendancy of digital technologies, are becoming increasingly outmoded.

The show is curated by Amara Craighill, Ross Carlisle, and Andrew Russeth.