Born in Ohio, Matthew Placek relocated to New York City in 1997 to pursue his interests in photography, video, and installation. His commitment to capturing presence, whether as a sense of place, the passage of time, and/or the relationships between people, has led to his multimedia output. Placek’s practice is durational and also engaged with the archive. Of primary concern to Placek is negotiating uninterrupted concentration from both his viewers and subjects, which he does through expanding the formal and conceptual notions of portraiture. As our attention spans diminish due to the spatio-temporal dislocations of our era, the frenzied use of cell phones and social media, he aims to cultivate a moment with the sitter that lasts longer than a glance and can generate immersive and resonant experiences.
Placek has collaborated with notable contemporary artists such as Marina Abramovic, Julian Schnabel, David Salle, Vanessa Beecroft, Richard Prince, Brice Marden, Cindy Sherman, James Ivory, and Yoko Ono. His individual and collaborative work has been exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Kitchen, Deitch Projects, Mary Boone Gallery, Galleria Lia Rumma, the Sundance Film Festival’s “New Frontier,” The Toronto International Film Festival, The Stockholm International Film Festival, The National Young Arts Foundation and the National Monument Fort Jay at Governors Island. He has been awarded grants from The National Young Arts Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. His residencies include The Pocantico Center at the Rockefeller estate and Marfa, Texas.

Zoë Buckman was born in 1985 in Hackney, East London. She studied at The International Center of Photography (GS ‘09) and was awarded an Art Matters Grant in 2017.  She has shown in solo exhibitions at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London; Fort Gansevoort Gallery, New York; Gavlak Gallery, Los Angeles; Papillion Art, Los Angeles; Project for Empty Space, Newark; Garis & Hahn Gallery, Los Angeles; and Milk Gallery, New York. Group exhibitions include Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore; MOCA, Virgina; Camden Arts Centre, London; The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Children’s Museum of the Arts, New York; Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York; The Tarble Arts Center, Illinois; Goodman Gallery, South Africa; Jack Shainman Gallery, New York;  Unit London; NYU Florence, Grunwald Gallery of Art Gallery, Indiana University; The Democratic National Convention, Philadelphia; The National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Atlanta; and The National Museum of African-American History & Culture,Washington, D.C.; The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey; The Centre Regional D’Art Contemporain, Sète, France and Smack Mellon, New York. Public art installations include For Freedoms “50 State Initiative”, “Inaction is Apathy” billboard at 21c Museum Hotel Bentonville, Arkansas and “Champ” at The Standard, Downtown LA with Art Production Fund. Buckman currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.