The Frist Art Museum presents Ron Jude: 12 Hz, an exhibition of large-scale black-and-white photographs that defy customary expectations of landscape imagery, revealing the planet’s raw materials and the often-imperceptible forces that shape its appearance. Organized by the Barry Lopez Foundation for Art & Environment, the exhibition will be on view from May 26 through August 13, 2023.
In twenty photographs depicting glacial formations, lava flows, tectonic patterns, and tidal currents, Oregon-based photographer Ron Jude (b. 1965) reminds us that geological phenomena operate indifferently to our presence, even in the face of an ecological crisis. The images, stripped bare of evidence of human existence, challenge the myth of human centrality. Neither sentimental, nor moralistic, nor explicitly political, the body of work is a potent visual statement that may offer some solace in documenting the persistence of the physical world. The exhibition’s title, 12 Hz—referencing the lowest threshold of human hearing—alludes to the limits of perception as well as the powerful yet often undetectable forces that shape the physical world.
Ron Jude was born in Los Angeles in 1965 and raised in rural Idaho. He earned a BFA in studio art from Boise State University, Boise, Idaho, in 1988, and an MFA from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1992. His photographs have been widely exhibited around the world and are held in the permanent collections of the George Eastman Museum; the J. Paul Getty Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. Jude is also the author of twelve books—most recently, 12 Hz (2020). He has received grants or awards from Light Work; San Francisco Camerawork; the Aaron Siskind Foundation; and the Friends of Photography and was the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2019. He lives and works in Eugene, Oregon, where he is a professor of art at the University of Oregon.
Program
Friday, May 26 Conversation: Ron Jude with Toby Jurovics
12:00–1:00 p.m.
Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery
Free to members; gallery admission required for not-yet-members
Join artist Ron Jude for an in-gallery conversation with Toby Jurovics about the exhibition 12 Hz.
For current hours and additional information, visit FristArtMuseum.org or call 615.244.3340.
