Art Lies, Volume 66, Summer 2010 Page: 71
96 p. : col. ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
I
I
,
'U
hA
L. Asha Schechter, Picture 06, 2008; C-print; 43 x 60 inches; courtesy the artist
R. Augusta Wood, Sesame Street (1980, 2008), 2009; C-print; 27 x 27 inches;
courtesy the artistHOUSTON
Assembly: Eight Photographers from Southern California
FotoFest at Williams Tower
There is nothing "too cool" about the work in Assembly: Eight Photographers
from Southern California, one of the four marquee exhibitions of the
FotoFest 2010 Biennial. Eschewing any expected mediated glamour, ironic
urbanity or indifferent grit of a SoCal tag, the mostly medium- to large-
scale photographs on display instead strive to establish intimate, physical
connections both within and outside the frame. Joey Lehman Morris, for
example, pictures two park benches placed too close together on a hillside
vista or, in another work, a van parked inside a formfitting cage/garage.
The former work is hung low to the ground, while Morris' George Mallory's
Cradle (Waxing Gibbous), a gold-framed black-and-white image of a moonlit
patch of desert soil, is placed directly on the floor. This lateral object, one
of the exhibition's best surprises, is genuinely disarming, reconfiguring
Southern California's horizons as a sandbox.
More interested in locale than landscape, Assembly's eight photog-
raphers produce portraits of place, and really, portraits of the desire to
inhabit place. Nicole Belle's images catch her putting herself in acrobatic
contortions, seeming efforts to feel out the spatial relations of her home.
Her faceless choreography gets most interesting where gravity genuinely
threatens physical, and seemingly, domestic collapse.
Similarly, Augusta Wood's sentimental photographic declarations-
images of quotes etched in snow or drizzled in syrup-tug strongest when
they deny easy discernability. In Same Sun, a transparency held up to the
sky reads "i'll look out the window at the los angeles sky and realize we're
both feeling the same"-the implied final word blocked out by the glare
of the depicted sun. Most touching perhaps is the text-free Sesame Street,
which ostensibly presents an image of a diaper-clad toddler engrossed by
a TV. Realizing the picture is actually an archival snapshot projected ontothe television cabinet of an empty room makes palpable the emptiness
between image and experience, memory and reality, home and house.
Matt Lipps also constructs images to evoke feelings of homeward nos-
talgia. His pictures of tabletop tableaux feature odd cutouts of Ansel Adams
shots propped in front of pictures of domestic spaces. Anthropomorphized
Yosemite rock faces and cloud forms suggest eerie familial dramas. Color
filters on the background images-a kind of Formica formalism-complete
the dreamscape theater of material and manifest destinies.
Matthew Brandt takes a more literal approach to merging public and
personal experiences, and making images tangible. Lake Hollywood CA #3
is a C-print of a Lake Hollywood vista developed with liquid from that very
body of water. Potentially gimmicky, Brandt's doubly indexical process has
visual potential as well, producing an assortment of flares, washes and
solarizations. Asha Schechter's idea-board-like images further explore
photography's material iteration, though through the equalizing force of
digital technology. Large, soothing pastel surfaces are dotted by images
of feelgood, peace-loving communal activities in various printed forms:
snapshots, Polaroids and newspapers cutouts. Each color-field background
is an intense zoom-in of one of the images presented in front, creating a
potentially recursive continuum of photographic layers. Expansive in depth,
but also as surface, Schechter's works implore the viewer to assemble
relations between their various parts-to, as with the rest of Assembly,
agrregrate meaning from proximity and association, both pictured and felt.
Kurt Mueller is a Critical Studies Fellow at the Glassel School of Art and the
Associate Editor of Art Lies.71 ART LIES NO. 66
.-_
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This issue can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Periodical.
Gupta, Anjali. Art Lies, Volume 66, Summer 2010, periodical, 2010; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth228031/m1/73/?q=%22Puleo%2C+Risa%22: accessed June 8, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .