DAVID GARLAND
Solar Cells
September 18 – October 25, 2026
Solar Cells is a solo exhibition of photographs by artist and musician David Garland. Through reflection, sunlight, and unexpected optical phenomena, Garland’s photographs transform the familiar world into shifting fields of light, color, and form. His images move between macro and micro perspectives, revealing new visual possibilities within the ordinary world around us.
Garland’s photographic process begins with looking and discovery. “Like a mirage, these optical phenomena are real, but not the physical things they appear to be,” he writes. “My images are discovered as much as created.” In Solar Cells, reflections and the changing behavior of light become collaborators in the making of the image, allowing recognizable forms to dissolve and reassemble into something simultaneously familiar and strange.
The work reflects Garland’s longstanding interest in the relationship between perception and imagination. Rather than simply documenting what is in front of the camera, his photographs find images within light itself, where reflection alters scale, surface, depth, and the apparent identity of an object. The resulting pictures offer an invitation to look again at the physical world and to notice the visual phenomena that are constantly occurring within it.
Garland’s artistic practice developed alongside a long and influential career in music. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1976 and worked in New York City as a graphic designer for ten years. During the late 1970s and 1980s, he was also active in New York’s experimental music scene, developing his own work as a multi-instrumentalist and collaborating with innovative musicians. Since 1981, he has released a dozen recordings encompassing acoustic, electronic, and improvised music. Musician Sean Ono Lennon has described Garland as a composer who “pushes the limits of acceptable harmony and dissonance, yet never at the expense of beauty.”
Since 1983, Garland has also presented unusual music on New York radio. He produced and hosted Spinning On Air on New York Public Radio for 28 years, featuring performances and interviews with artists including Patti Smith, Yoko Ono, Donovan, Paul McCartney, They Might Be Giants, Van Dyke Parks, Animal Collective, Vashti Bunyan, Sufjan Stevens, John Zorn, Dirty Projectors, and many others.
After moving to Upstate New York in 2011, Garland returned more fully to visual art. His photographic images, shared widely online, have developed a dedicated following and have been presented in exhibitions including at Headstone Gallery in Kingston and Foreland in Catskill.
SPECIAL EVENTS:
Fri, September 25 at 7pm: Lecture by David Garland
Fri, October 2 at 7pm: Solo musical performance by David Garland
Fri, October 16 at 7pm: Performance by Music for Furniture
This exhibition is curated by Finnish artist Sampsa Pirtola and presented in collaboration with Rudolf Steiner Library (www.rudolfsteinerlibrary.org).