Claire Desalme: Escapes

While depicting nature through photographic form is a raging challenge, this body of work rose to that and I believe successfully conquered my own bias and baggage surrounding this heavily historied photographic genre. I don't think of nature when I look at it, it has transcended that frame and pushed me into another, a place that could surround me with its calm color palette and unnerve me with its own point of view. The positioning of the horizon line borders on unsettling, and I question if I could possibly go there or if I am stuck, a wanderer who never reaches a destination. These ideas of place, certainty, and direction (be it specific or ambiguous) are crucial in this work. But others have been there before me, I look at what they left behind, or what it left behind-- there is the knowledge of the other. Perhaps they were as lost as I am, and yet I begin to believe this way of being lost is a mere term, neither negative or positive... it just is. I enter into this expanse of landmarks and they are a tribute to different states of being, to emotional states, to subconscious states, they are an image of the resting place.

Congrats!

xoxo,

Charlie

This FRIDAY

Wow I can barely keep up with this show schedule (as you can see). But this Friday we have 3 more undergrad photo exhibitions!
Melanie Green
Stephanie Foltz
Tiffany Shelly
I am so excited to see all of this get put up! Keep on keepin' on
xoxo,
Charlie

Haley Richter: Projections from the Cave

These images take you away into a world that questions the very nature of place and object. They become fused together but in a way that encourages uncertainty, they coexist but not without the jolt of the out-of-place. The use of the square implanted in the images strongly references photography, I think of the white seamless put out there, this strange stagnant object that is always thought of as “universal”. Placed out in the world, it begins to censor its surroundings, and I am also made aware of the unnatural in this "back drop"… it is not universal, it is sterile in a world that is detailed and dirty and full of emotions. This work documents an idea but is suggestive of a thousand more. A man’s graceful fingers hold a small sheet of glass but he cannot see him self in it, he can only hope for a muddled view of what lays underneath…as I do. A glimpse of something that is just under the surface of our daily existence but the viewer must decide what that is, the truth beneath reality.

Congrats Haley,

xoxo

-Charlie

Review: Cally Iden

I suppose "sweeping" would be the word to describe it.

Last week, Cally Iden's photographs made their way to the Temple Gallery for her MFA Thesis Show. Walking through her space you couldn't help but be pulled by the work's grandeur presentation. Elevated above the birds eye, Iden's photographs take on a topographical viewpoint giving each viewer permission to get up close and evaluate every little detail. What we find are markers, holes, shadows, vessels, and most importantly color. Rarely am I on the side of color when it comes to photography especially with it being constantly misused, but Cally repels my preconceptions by giving color its habitual needs.

By placing the works on the ground, we begin to feel the distance. Not only the specific distance between the camera and it's plane of view but also between ourselves in relation to the world we inhabit. Im not describing the deprivation between nature and human beings, but rather the isolation I felt looking into the vastness of the earth's surfaces. There is an acuteness presented here, that extends further beyond the socio-environmental claw giving us a sweeping sensation of weightlessness.

Congrats Cally!

Review: Chip Colson's Horizons

A translucent streamline functioning on behalf of where water submerges itself within the surrounding space gives us a clear sense of linearity. Chip Colson's Horizons (now on display at Tyler School of Art) benumbs the viewer as we peer into a more scientific display of how photography can work. Minimal in presentation, and void of any color, Chip breeds a familiar, yet detailed examination of the uninterrupted functions that rhythm, movement, structure, and space have on the constructive world we inhabit. The water on the horizon, both physiologically and poetically remind me of how far this notion of one's destination can expand, undeviated, towards the frontiers of humanity.

Congrats Chip!

Review: Christian Suchecki and Sophia Mariano

Christian's alternative work draws the viewer in with larger then life portraits. These cyanotype's are pieced together in such a highly constructed way I can't help but become deeply invested in the Artist's Hand. Varying shades of blue unite a group of people who otherwise could have nothing in common and I begin to look at them in such a way that I would never have before. I know I would pass them by on the street or at the bar, but here, in tattered imagery they turn into emotion that pleads for my attention. 

Sophia creates a stream of profiles lining the wall. The images are shown with the smallest detail on glass and speak to the universal way of communicating. This tried and true act of the profile, the human form is as universal as it is unique. But I am not an observer, I do not feel as though they are me and I am them. Rather, I feel as though this is a call to thought, an analysis of human beings. The glass they are printed on becomes a massive slide for me to peer at through a microscope. These objects are both precious and industrial with large bolts keeping them in place but their very existence borders on fragile. 

Reception 6-9 this Friday the 13th!

well done

xoxo,

Charlie

Review: Jessica Stewart and Keristin Gaber

"I am here describing the taste of water to no one and everyone in particular."

This is the first sentence that each viewer will see peering through what seems to be a torn-out eyehole. It's a phrase, without a doubt that you will ponder before and after your walkthrough, as it unintentionally frames the works of artists Jessica Stewart and Keristin Gaber.

Due to this year's NASAD review, each senior has had to pair with one another, splitting and sharing their show space to accommodate everyone's BFA opening in an orderly fashion. Given the minimal space we have in the photography dept., what seemed like an oppressive task has now been indisputably diverted by Jessica’s and Keristin's collaborative show Mid/Way.

Both infinitely distinct and seamlessly integrated, the pieces on the wall call for our attention. Varied through whispers and shouts, the works are as uncompromising as they are vulnerable.

It is just paper after all. (and glass)

To be fooled twice is humiliating enough, but three times, well that’s past the point of absurdity. This is Keristin Gaber’s claim. Her work discloses the nonsensical while simultaneously tries to reason with it. To me it's an endless breath; the immovable shadow avoids its architect and by doing so creates its own agenda: a new one. Each piece follows a similar role.

Fool Me Thrice could be seen as a reactionary element, fulfilling the establishments of a space while also protesting the preconceptions that leach onto it. Underneath the interface of its sincere composure, lies a hint of turmoil, proclaiming an unwritten declaration of the absurdity that comes within it.

As Keristin revises our surfaces by stripping them of their concreteness, Jessica Stewart decidedly side steps the walls by punching right through them. A feeling to fall is present; reminding us that depth is the greatest of heights. Each hole is an examination of fear, a psychological mystique that only a patient with cunning ambitions could portray.

Earlier in the year, I would have described Jessica’s photographs as concealed wounds, an inescapable presence absent for the mind to penetrate. Looking at the work now I must digress. The work assures you that the obscure will never cease to expand. A small transformation of scale has liberated the photographs to their fundamental state, and each hole, collapsing the surface of each construction, abides synonymously within the cracks of our skin, the breaks in our bones, flooding straight to the darkest depths of our psyche.

Within the hemisphere of art, subjective reasoning can be as claustrophobic as it is ambiguous. Sometimes it is best to think of your frame…

…So again, this is just paper I’m writing about. Paper In Space. (Oh and glass too)

Congrats to both of you,

<3 <3 George

-Now that we are in prime show season, expect reviews from both Charlie and me in the upcoming weeks. Also make sure you come to each show. THERE ARE SO MANY!!!!!