Aspen Mays, Untitled (Fireflies inside the body of camera, 8:37-8:39PM, June 26, 2008).
This was my first visit to Art Chicago and Next (May 1 – 4, 2009), and while the city is often celebrated for its arts and culture, I was nonetheless pleasantly surprised at how much I connected with its hip and strikingly vibrant art scene. In conjunction with the fairs, many museums and galleries hosted openings, brunches, and cocktail parties. The most dynamic exhibition was The School of the Art Institute Chicago’s MFA show. Other notable exhibitions include “Take Your Time” by Olafur Eliasson at MoCA Chicago and “Proposals for Remnants,” paintings by Angelina Gualdoni at Kavi Gupta. After a few studio visits, impromptu lunch dates, random artist encounters, curator panels and the occasional drunken art world scuffle, Chicago was already beginning to feel like home.
While I was inspired by Chicago’s contemporary art offerings, I was there primarily to discover photography, both at the fairs and within Chicago’s larger art community. The following is a list of what stood out.
Henry Wessel, San Francisco (1972), Art Chicago. Image courtesy of Rena Bransten Gallery.
San Francisco (1972) by Henry Wessel is a tightly cropped, close-up image of two larger-than-life manicured bushes. The painstaking method at which these bushes are manicured represent an obsession with beauty, perfection and cleanliness, all characteristics associated with suburbanization. Unfortunately, the joke is on the homeowner, as nothing in life is that safe, that perfect, or that predictable, no matter how hard one tries. Instead of seeing “beauty” in these bushes (though the photograph is aesthetically pleasing), I find the manner in which they are controlled to be frightening. However, this is exactly why I am drawn to the image. I am continually interested in how conflict manifests itself in photography, and am particularly keen on this photograph’s depiction of struggle. In this image, the conflict is between the homeowner and his/her need to exercise control in a world that is unpredictable and forever in flux.
Ben Gest, Erick in His Volvo (2005), Next. Image courtesy of Stephen Daiter Gallery.
Ben Gest is a master of creating tension and anxiety, evidenced in the work he has made over the last few years. I use the word “made” literally, as his life-size portraits are the result of several perspective photographs composed into a single image. The subjects are intense, often lost in their thoughts, and while the viewer has no way of knowing what they are thinking, what has happened before or what will happen next, it is easy to relate. Printed at 40 x 60 inches, and cropped so that the subject fills most of the frame, Gest, does a fantastic job of portraying loneliness and isolation. In Erick in His (2005) man battles with some form of universal pain, and unfortunately, like the rest of us, he has no choice but to deal and move forward.
Aspen Mays, Untitled (Fireflies inside the body of camera, 8:37-8:39PM, June 26, 2008)
School of the Art Institute of Chicago MFA Show. Image courtesy of the artist.
I am always fascinated with the unique ways that photographers use light to raise questions about photographic practice. Aspen Mays, in her photo, Untitled (Fireflies inside the body of camera, 8:37-8:39PM, June 26, 2008), takes the use of light to an innovative and dynamic level. As the title indicates, Mays uses the fireflies as a light source, an experiment that creates a gradient-like image, which are both a reference and a challenge to photography’s formal elements. The final image is not the result of the artist looking through her lens, composing a frame or arranging a vantage point. In short, Mays is not “seeing” or employing any directional forces. This uncontrolled and unplanned image relies solely on the chemistry between the unexposed film and the fireflies.
Abelardo Morell, Times Square in Hotel Room (1997) Art Chicago. Image courtesy of Alan Koppel Gallery.
Time Square in a Hotel Room is a part of a larger body of work where Abelardo Morell photographs over 50 camera obscuras in various places around the world. This image is of particular merit because it reinforces photography’s transparency. Because Time Square is such a familiar image, the photograph tricks us into believing that the subject is the empty hotel room or perhaps the neatly made bed. We notice Time Square, but so what, we’ve seen it over a 100 times in person, as a postcard, and on television and film. This is where the photograph is most successful. Images of Time Square are so quotidian that we fail to notice them, even when they are upside down. It takes a second before we realize that this is a photograph of a camera obscura of a hotel room lit by Time Square. In this image, Morell plays on our numbness to pop culture and proves that there are always new ways of seeing old images.
Augusto Zanela, Cubano Reflego, Art Chicago. Image courtesy of Praxis International Art
If Time Square in a Hotel Room is a critique of how we see (or don’t see), then Augusto Zanela’s Cubano Reflego is an exploration of the ways that only the camera can see. In this picture, a mirror reflects a large studio, with a man behind his camera and a taped figure on the floor. What the human eye can see is the figure closest to the artists, which looks like a Y enclosed in a hexagon (you should try it at home). Conversely, the camera, with the aid of the mirror, sees a floating box, an image that only the camera can see. This paradox addresses larger ontological and epistemological concerns in photography. Photographs are famous for turning a three-dimensional world into two dimensions, or a flat image. In Cubano Reflego, there is an optical illusion at play that makes a flat form appear as a three-dimensional box. Throughout the entire series, Zanela stretches the limitations of what photographs are, what they do and what they mean.
