IMAGE: Penelope Umbrico, Sunset Portraits from 13,243,857 Sunset Pictures on Flickr 10/8/13, 2013 / C-prints / Dimension variable. Gift of the Mark and Hilarie Moore Collection, 2013.010 / COLLECTION OF THE ORANGE COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART
We are excited to announce the following exhibition at the ORANGE COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART is now on view. Penelope Umbrico: Sunset Portraits from 13,243,857 Sunset Pictures on Flickr 10/8/13, on view now through May 25, 2025, in the Yvonne de C Segerstrom Gallery.
Penelope Umbrico (b. 1957, Philadelphia, PA) uses photo-sharing and consumer-to-consumer websites, mail-order catalogues, and image archives as expansive resources to create installations, video, and digital media works. Sifting through images on the internet using search engines for subjects like TV screens, mirrors, sunsets, and the moon, her work explores the production and consumption of images—and individual and collective identities—with attention to the technologies that both shape and are shaped by these forces.
One of Umbrico’s most iconic works, Sunset Portraits from 13,243,857 Sunset Pictures on Flickr 10/8/13 (2013), is a series of appropriated photographs capturing people standing in front of sunsets, sourced from Flickr (once considered one of the largest photo-sharing websites), a project she began in 2010. At that time, camera technology prioritized exposing for the brightness of the sun, often rendering the individuals in the foreground as silhouettes, thereby erasing the subjectivity of the individual.
Installed at the Avenue of the Arts Gallery at OCMA, Umbrico’s Sunset Portraits contemplates the flood of images in contemporary life while offering a meditation on collective experience through a universal theme. In an era that emphasizes individuality and highlights differences, while often finding conflict in those distinctions, the work presents a strikingly tranquil vision. Like the silhouettes in Umbrico’s work, we find ourselves in a state of solitude while simultaneously sharing in the wonder that unites us all.
Orange County Museum of Art
3333 Avenue of the Arts
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
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