SIGNAL/NOISE
DOUG FOGELSON
October 12th - November 14th, 2025
Opening reception and listening party: October 12, 6-9pm
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Old Friends is pleased to announce Signal/Noise, a new video installation by Doug Fogelson, on view at Old Friends after sunset October 12th through November 14th. Please join us for a special viewing event and listening party on Sunday, October 12th, 6pm - 9pm.
Signal/Noise was originally conceived as a series of color photograms on analog film created between 2023 and 2025. Using gridded materials and brief exposures to color-filtered light, Fogelson works in darkness, combining elements by feel and chance. In collaboration with video editor Matt Volla, the artist then translates the photograms into moving images—crossfading, shifting saturation, cropping, and fragmenting forms.
The resulting animation expands across the gallery, geometric photograms materializing along the axes of the inhabited architecture. Sculptural forms turn the space into a three-dimensional projection “screen,” between which animated geometries skip and fall.
Visible only at night through Old Friend’s storefront windows, Signal/Noise activates the interior architecture of a gallery storefront within a predominantly commercial corridor.
The gallery will be open from 6pm to 9pm on the evening of October 12th, or by appointment after sunset for the duration of the installation. Gallery staff are happy to offer virtual, guided walkthroughs for those unable to attend.
Doug Fogelson’s work has been exhibited internationally in both galleries and museums, and is held in public collections including The J. Paul Getty Center (Los Angeles), The Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), the Center for Creative Photography (Tucson), and the Staatliche Museum für Fotografie (Berlin). He studied at Columbia College Chicago and graduated from The Art Institute of Chicago.
In addition to his visual work, Fogelson creates sound experiments and music with releases on the Love All Day label and various projects on his Bandcamp page.
Fogelson also founded and directed Front Forty Press, an independent art-focused publishing imprint. He has taught in the Photography Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and currently serves on the Board of Filter Photo, where he co-founded the Filter Space Gallery. In 2023, he and his team launched One Year for Earth (1y4e), a nonprofit initiative dedicated to helping people “see through the lens of sustainability.”
Please join us at Old Friends for a listening party on October 12th, 6-9pm, to enjoy the accompanying Signal/Noise sound pieces. In audio, “signal” refers to intentional transmission, while “noise” captures incidental interference. The contributing collaborative soundtracks reflect this tension in distinct ways:
Doug Fogelson created two pieces using an analog Schumann Wave signal generator and a “recording of nothing”—while incorporating chance (as in the photograms)—plus a third composition layering field recordings of machines, etc., with human-played parts.
Jeffrey Lubow designed software that translates the photograms’ visual edge patterns and color weights from the video into sound, effectively facilitating the imagery to “play itself”.
Andy Hall and Piezas each contributed new works for the video, built from modular synths and analog instruments.
Together, this multifaceted network of technological and artistic talents attunes each element of Signal/Noise.
