In Progress

The recent exhibit at the Whitney was great, but not particularly curated. It was more like they took a bunch of pictures they liked, and just hung em on the wall. Which is sort of…refreshing? My formal review follows.

“Signs of the Time: Contemporary Photography from the Whitney Collection”

The Whitney Museum’s current exhibit comprises one intimate room displaying contemporary photography in a wide range of styles. The artists featured vary in techniques and focus, and the curators explicitly do not try to draw relationships between the works on display in the introduction. As such, it is difficult to assess the exhibit as a holistic collection with a unified message. It makes sense to instead discuss the photographs by artist.

Walking into the gallery, the viewer immediately comes face to face with the largest image in the room. “La Alberca” by James Casebere from 2005 is approximately seven feet by six feet, and features an indoor pool and three wall surfaces that function as mini canvasses, as each is dominated by a very different texture. The wall behind the pool is divided into two textures, with the black and white tiles on the bottom third of the wall slightly smeared by the thick paint slapped across the rest of the wall.  Dim lighting characterizes the room but is cut by a shaft of light that spills in from the bottom right, illuminating the surface of the pool with an oily sheen. The image gives the impression of an intimate space while retaining an amazing amount of depth. “La Alberca” is the only digital photograph in the exhibit, and it looks more like a painting than any other, largely due to the detailed textures that look like they pop up from the surface.

There doesn’t appear to be any social or political dimension to the image. I found myself responding to it on a purely aesthetic level, appreciating the balanced composition and muted and strongly defined color palette. More than any other element, the lighting gives the sense of a posed photograph, and evokes a sense of looking into a theatrical space. I found myself wishing I could take this picture home with me to luxuriate in the space.

Anne Collier’s “Despair” from 2006 is the most straightforward piece on display. A white tape cassette on a white background is titled DESPAIR in simple capital letters, with the magnetic tape fully yanked out of the bottom of the cassette into a tangled mess artfully arranged to one side. While nothing about the piece demanded that it be presented in photographic form (the cassette could have been presented in its physical form to almost identical effect), it is immaculately executed.

When I was young, the only music worth stealing from my parents were their cassette tapes and records of the Beatles. I would often put on a blank cassette that had the song “Misery” at the beginning, which I invariably cried through. It was the most profound emotional state I could conceive of at seven.  With one simple image, Collier transported me back to that state in an instant, summarizing an emotion in pure form. The relationship Collier draws between music, emotion, and form is well served by her minimalist approach. In fact, the concept behind the work is so simple, it’s hard to believe nobody else did it first.

Adam McEwan goes several steps beyond Collier, with two untitled pieces on display that take the form of fake obituaries. The subjects are Bill Clinton, former president of the United States, and Malcolm McLaren, the influential punk figure and former manager of the Sex Pistols. Each image takes the form of a full page from a newspaper with the name of the “dead” person, a subtitle summation of their primary role, and an iconic photograph surrounded by a lengthy tribute in classic obit style.

McEwan chooses to enshrine Clinton at his most powerful and persuasive, with an image of him at the presidential podium, the official presidential seal partially visible. He is mid-speech, sincerity and urgency shining through his face and upraised hands. In contrast, McLaren is shown staring out impishly at the camera, wearing a white button-up shirt with the words “be reasonable defend the impossible” scattered across in a design that could have come from the influential boutique he ran for many years with his former lover and business partner Vivienne Westwood.

McEwan skillfully subverts our expectations through a format that mimics the broadsheet perfectly, down to the lines on the text edge that sometimes appears in newspapers. He draws on the symbolic power of the newspaper as a sign of truth and facts to force the viewer to reflect for a moment on current reality, to confirm that what he has done is in fact fiction. McEwan also goes beyond the classic interpretive choices available in photography, by choosing a format that allows him to include lengthy prose that is shown at a size that is clearly readable. While the style of the obituaries read straight out of a newspaper, McEwan has interpreted the long-term influence of each figure throughout the prose, leaving the cause of death open to the viewer’s imagination. While the works were completed in 2006, McEwan stops short of recording either life after about 1998, implying that these figures have perhaps finished making their respective influential contributions to society and have lost their relevance in the current age.

At the opposite end of the spectrum lies Walead Beshty’s two “Pictures Made By My Hand with the Assistance of Light” from 2006. The two images are dominated by patches of light and dark, striated into a marbleized pattern and physically crumpled to add a reflective dimension. The images are modestly sized and well executed. Beshty’s works bring texture and form into focus, downplaying the image as content with no recognizable subject matter.

Sam Samore’s works, displayed right next to Beshty’s, are much larger and drastically different in texture and content. “Scenario #12” offers an extreme close-up of a face that could be male or female. The grain of the image reveals imperfections in the face but softens them to make the image beautiful at near or far examination. “Scenario #4” presents two figures facing each other, with the camera position in the classic over-the-shoulder shot of modern cinema.

However, unlike in cinema, the viewer is not put in the place of the figure whose face we cannot see. Instead, we focus on the figure who faces out, whose face is full of emotion but reveals few clues as to what is motivating him. There is an electric connection between the two figures created by his facial expression which makes for a highly dynamic image.

Paul Graham’s series of nine untitled photographs take place on a hazy day in Pittsburgh. Throughout the sequence, a man cuts grass using an aged red lawnmower, grass that in some shots are shown to be next to a parking lot, and in others is shown to extend indefinitely into rolling hills. The man is shown in full in every image with one exception, in which he and the lawnmower are nowhere to be seen. Instead, we see a minivan, inviting us to presume that the vehicle belongs to the man. We are given no real hint as to why he is cutting the grass; there is no uniform or logo on him or on the machine. His clothes are unremarkable. The grass itself is brown and dry in swathes, bright green and lush in others. There is one image which takes precedence over the rest, displayed at twice the size. The figure is shown at profile with a shower of lights surrounding him and weak sun above, evoking a sense of magic in the most mundane act. View the series at Paul Graham’s website, called “A Shimmer of Possibility.”

I enjoyed the exhibit immensely and was able to glean something from each of the works on display. The lack of uniformity was welcome, though if I were a casual observer, I might have left more unsatisfied without a clear message to take away with me. As it was, I came away with a sense of the breadth of contemporary photography and an appreciation for the diversity of form and style these artists have developed.

Posted on November 3rd, 2008 by DeepthiW
Filed under: Art, School, Uncategorized