This interview is also available as a zine.
“Bringing The Outside In” is on view through June 2025 at The Ox Museum, Indeed Brewing, 711 15th Ave NE, Minneapolis, MN 55413.
Photo courtesy of Vincent Dezutti
EM: If you had to summarize your artistic practice in two sentences, what would you say?
VD:I’m primarily a photographer and video artist with an experimental approach – examining how making and consuming images impacts our relationship with others, the world around us, and our own memories. My work intentionally foregrounds the artist’s hand to show how different photographic techniques and technologies document time and space to varying degrees of realism.
Photo courtesy of Vincent Dezutti
EM: I’m loving these latest photographs that look like they are made using projections – can you tell us a bit about them?
VD: They were made with projections! I actually used photos from a previous project that I shot at Tofte Lake Center in Ely, MN. The exhibition theme, Bringing the Outside In, was decided before I made the work, but projecting photos and re-photographing them has been something that’s been bouncing in my head for a while, so it was a perfect opportunity to actually do something I’ve been wanting to do. I’m really interested in the photograph as an object itself, and there’s a lot going on in this series that I’m really excited about! Projecting each of the nature photos on the walls of home recontextualizes them and deliberately distorts their shape, mirroring the way that photography itself is imperfect at accurately documenting its subject, as well as how memory distorts over time. I’m also using previous work to create the new series, which literalizes the way I take ideas from one project and build toward others in the growth of my artistic practice. I also just really like the play between shapes and colors in these images. The series is titled Reminder because the photos serve as a reminder of the thing they actually depict, but also as a reminder to myself to take a deep breath and step outside sometimes.
Photo courtesy of Vincent Dezutti
EM: What else are you working on right now?
VD: I feel like I’m always working on a bunch of things, most of which are about 25% done…. Every couple of projects actually makes it out into the world, eventually. Right now I’m working on a short film made from a series of 35mm photos I shot while biking over the winter. I shot a couple of rolls, scanned them all, then started physically damaging and rescanning them so I could keep sequencing them as they slowly degrade with cuts, scratches, and pen marks. It’s still very much a work in progress, but I’d love to screen or have it show in a gallery setting at some point in the near future. I also do a lot with cyanotypes – I have a couple that will be showing at the Phipps Center this fall in their Human x Machine: Exploring Art in the Age of AI exhibition (no AI was used for my work, but it uses found AI created images from Instagram).
Photo courtesy of Vincent Dezutti
Disclosure: I know Vincent from a past walking workshop.