In between a rock and a hard place at Rice Media Center

Work by Rice University photography lecturer Justin Raphael Roykovich will be featured as the first fall exhibition by the university’s department of Visual and Dramatic Arts.

Rice University photography lecturer Justin Raphael Roykovich

“In/Between | A Rock and a Hard Place: Visions from the Ghost World of How to Survive One’s Sovereignty of Self Destruction in a Land We Assumed We Once Knew” debuts Sept. 5 at the Rice Media Center Gallery during an opening reception from 6-8 p.m.

While Roykovich currently teaches digital and analog photography at Rice, he is a conceptual and research-based artist, working in and around New York, Washington D.C., Minneapolis and now Houston. His current practice explores relationships with one’s specific location, intersected with the psychic history that resides in that site.

With “In/Between,” Roykovich examines the unsettled time we live in as humanity experiences social, cultural and environmental shifts in ways we cannot yet define. He includes explorations of landscapes that existed in the past and those that may exist in the future, places caught in transition and the usefulness of building identities upon such constantly shifting terrain.

Roykovich utilizes multiple media to explore these psychic environments of intersections, systems, networks and experiences, using himself as a queer-coded conduit. This happens primarily through camera-based research and documentation of locations, which is then used create immersive installations employing photographs, drawings, performances, video and found objects.

Roykovich’s work has been exhibited throughout the world in the collections of various private and public institutions. He has created site-specific work during several national and international residencies, including at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild in Woodstock, New York; Chatauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York; the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, Virginia; and the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica Venezia in Venice, Italy. He spent a year at the Galveston Artist Residency before coming to Rice.

“In/Between | A Rock and a Hard Place: Visions from the Ghost World of How to Survive One’s Sovereignty of Self Destruction in a Land We Assumed We Once Knew” will be on view at the Rice Media Center Gallery Sept. 6-Oct. 17. The Rice Media Center Gallery is free and open to the public Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.