Roberts & Tilton is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles artist, Becca Mann. With a particular focus on the specifics of light and the negotiation of intricate rendering placed in a dialectical relationship with hazy, empty zones, Becca Mann addresses neglected photographic sources. Long-forgotten people and places are re-animated, the moment of the photograph is prolonged and the scope of its representation widened, all as a method of examining liminal moments in human history.

In Becca Mann's first exhibition with Roberts & Tilton, the artist's imagery is sourced from a thirty-year span nearing the end of the nineteenth century. At once Becca Mann's work addresses the history of photography by emphasizing the inevitable flaws in the image itself; naturally obscuring environmental elements create abstracted, yet romantic sentiment. Concurrent with advancements in early photography was a state of unrest in America, Industrialization and Victoriana. The desire to document personal and natural details in fleeting times of instability allowed early photographers to approach quotidian moments, resulting in an enriched historical vision and a prime library of reference. Civil war and reconstruction, westward expansion and exploration set the tone of the exhibition.

Becca Mann's paintings dichotomize her subjects in the past and present by preserving them with the reverence in which they were photographed; however, with the sense of a contemporary artist, Becca Mann focuses on the imperfections of the physical photograph, resulting in compositions that seem both authentic and wholly unique. These ambiguous yet familiar figures result in haunting visions of the past with equal focus on the meticulous condition of Mann's technique. Large and small paintings alike address properties of light with acute attention to color and texture, typical of Mann's work. In 2007, Becca Mann was a featured in the House of Campari exhibition, Distinctive Messengers, curated by Simon Watson and Craig Hensela. Becca Mann is a graduate of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received a BFA in painting and a BA in critical writing.