As part of the city-wide 2014 Pittsburgh Biennial, Carnegie Museum of Art hosts an exhibition of recent works by Corey Escoto (b. 1983, Amarillo, TX). This is the artist’s first solo museum show, and the first one-person presentation of his work in Pittsburgh, which has been his home since 2010. Escoto has exhibited nationally and internationally, working in a variety of media, including photography, installation, and sculpture.

Corey Escoto: Sleight of Hand brings together several bodies of Escoto’s work, in which he uses obsolete technologies and handcrafted processes to subvert digital culture’s slick, instantaneous nature, introducing elements of chance, humor, and human error. The works include, and expand upon, Escoto’s unique multi-exposure experimental Polaroids, which are produced with a modified large-format camera and hand-cut light-blocking stencils covering the light sensitive film surface. A related group of sculptures “reverse-engineer” the Polaroids, bringing the geometric forms born therein into three dimensions. Suggesting the flatness of a photograph, these objects invert the sensibility of the images on which they are based: while  Escoto’s images evoke depth, the sculptures emphasize surface, incorporating “faux” materials that mimic the texture of marble, wood, and fabric.

The two- and three-dimensional works of Corey Escoto meditate on the production and consumption of illusion, both in terms of what we accept as photographic truth and, more broadly, how we distinguish fact from fiction in an ever more manipulated, media-saturated world. By hacking the Polaroid—a commonplace and yet seemingly magical technology—Escoto reveals how readily we suspend our disbelief.

This exhibition is organized by Amanda Donnan, assistant curator of contemporary art.