July 5th - August 5th

Mass / Void

Caroline Valites & Billy Chen.

The exhibition investigates how absence and presence shape memory, identity, and the way images structure contemporary experience.

Documents

Documentation

About

Artists

/about

Caroline’s cyanotypes and Billy Chen’s altered photographs meet at a shared inquiry into how memory is built, held, and disrupted, structured by systems of order yet continually reshaped by the unpredictable forces of loss, time, and representation.

Caroline grounds her images in the grid structures of her late father’s architectural sketches, layering controlled, measured frameworks with expansive skies and atmospheric fields that open into emotional and physical voids. These geometric interruptions act as traces of absence, revealing how grief reorganizes the spaces we inherit.

In parallel, Chen’s practice fractures photographic images through distortion and recontextualization, mirroring the instability of recollection in a culture where visuals endlessly circulate, detach, and mutate. Together, their works illuminate the fragile architectures that underpin memory, exposing both its constructed precision and its inevitable drift.

Opening Events

July 5th

Opening: 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM Main Gallery

Artist Talk: 5:30 PM Main Gallery

Curated by

Billy (Hancong) Chen

/artists

Billy Chen is a photographer and visual artist based in New York City. Born and raised in Shanghai, he moved to New York at the age of thirteen. This cross cultural upbringing informs his sensitivity to the visual codes embedded within different societies. His practice spans both digital and tactile image making, using scanners and cameras to capture everyday fragments that he then reconfigures through processes such as papier mâché, folding, layering, and collage. These material interventions mirror layered experiences of cultural translation, memory, and identity. By engaging with the overlooked debris of the modern visual landscape, Chen critiques the media’s pervasive influence and its power to condition perception, distract attention, and blur the line between reality and simulation. His work has been included in exhibitions such as Syncretism, Sip from the Skull Chapter I by Agora, Liminal Edifice at Gallery MC, Anything Can Be a Hammer, and the 2024 FIAP World Photography Conference, among others.
Caroline Valites was raised in Stratford, Connecticut. She received her BFA from the University of New Haven in 2005, where she studied biology and fine arts with a focus on photography. She received her MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2013. She currently resides in upstate New York and teaches at Emma Willard School. Caroline uses metaphor to create emotionally charged work that often addresses uncertainty and loss. She is inspired by physical phenomena and draws on her background in science and photography to work with materials such as light, sound, and magnetism. Her practice spans photography and installation. She has exhibited nationally and is published in Photographer’s Forum Magazine. She has received a grant from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst Arts Council, was a resident at Vermont Studio Center, and participated in the Ellsworth Kelly Teaching Residency in partnership with Art Omi.