Breedings: A Solo Exhibition by iO Tillett Wright

iO Tillett Wright is on the rise. This girl is a major hustler – the good kind of hustler – blogging on the NY Times “T Magazine” site, curating exhibitions with internationally acclaimed artists like Remi Roughe, Cheryl Dunn and Anthony Lister, and working on her own photography practice. This girl is it and to keep the momentum of her accomplishments going, iO will be exhibiting a new collection of photographs in her first NYC solo show which debuts at Fuse Gallery on Saturday, September 18th from 7-11pm.

Breedings features an exhibition of photographs expressed as static films – 20 two-frame, 35mm., B/W micro-movies, nano-narratives, miniature-blockbusters. For Breedings, the artist looked for instances of solitude within her subjects, photographing these individuals when they were at their least self-aware, in genuine moments of aloneness, usually amongst a crowd. The resulting imagery portrays those fleeting points of vulnerability and isolation, cracks in the celebratory façade that counter the contrived yet conventional nature of party photography. The photographs in Breeding appear in pairs, a decision made by iO when she observed the phenomenon of certain images appearing to be drawn to each other. The artist playfully equates this attraction to a sexual act whereby the two photographs couple their documentary narratives to produce a fictional offspring, a new story.

iO Tillett Wright is a self-taught artist living and working in New York, NY as a freelance writer and photographer. Born in a New York taxi cab, raised in the East Village of the 1980s, and educated by a rare mix of real life experience and creative mentorship, iO developed a passion for photography, filmmaking and editing. The artist credits her 19 years of acting experience in film and theater as having an integral influence on her artistic practice. At age 18, iO founded Overspray Magazine, a nationally distributed art magazine with international readership that spent 5 years in publication. iO’s work has been exhibited nationally with the recent inaugural group show at The Hole NYC as well as the Manifest Equality exhibition in Los Angeles. Breedings marks iO Tillett Wright’s first solo exhibition and coincides with the release of her first published book of photographs.