Permeability, Life, Human, Love

In these images, the idea is to apply an arithmatic progression to a word in a Google search that determines the outcome of the image, and ultimately determines the treatment of the image in the photoshopping process. In Permeability for instance I took the numerical value of the word, which is 135 if A is 1 and Z is 26. Then I added 1, 3 and 5 to get 9. Finally I divided 135 by nine to get fifteen. Then I did a google image search and took the 9th, 15th and 135th image in the search. In the case of Permeability, I duplicated the fiteenth image 135 times and duplicated the 135th image 15 times. Continuing with the system, every gradient mask or photoshop technique I applied was dictated by the system, plugging in these sums into every process. The text in all the pieces also equals one of the three sums and every piece was formed in the same way.

McCallum and Tarry: The Concept in Form

A recent exhibition at one of my favorite galleries in Chelsea, Caren Golden, featured 2006 and 2007 works of the conceptual duo, Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry. I was formerly unfamiliar with their works, but was attracted through the window by the images I saw on the wall. Really the content of the wall pieces, which were painted reproductions of civil rights era documentary photography weren't very innovative by themselves. I was essentially looking at photographs that are a part of the collective memory and consciousness, photographs though that carry a profound sense of painful progressive change in American and African American History. So these images are on the wall, but then McCallum and Tarry did innovate a bit by pulling a 'screen' of silk over the front of the painting, floating it approx. two inches above the surface of the paintings. The 'screens' were printed or painted with the image in the painting beneath, but some figures were off register and some more than others. For my eye, the effect was illusionistic so that the photographs ceased to be static and historical. Now the figures were animated again probably with some knowledge of op art and cognitive science to thank for the effect.

The figures whose screens were more off register appeared to move more quickly. By re-activating a static historical space , McCallum and Tarry seem to ask us to wonder if the content in the images might live today, or how does the evidence of history actively resonate in the present.
In the backroom, a video piece entitled Exchange records a blood transfusion between the artists, a mixed race couple. According to the press release, the piece was a

reference to the 'One Drop Rule', an antiquated notion that if a person has one drop of black blood in them, they are colored people. The idea that it could be that easy is an intriguing one for me, and apparently for McCallum as well. But the social justice element of the performance and video was not the most salient aspect of it for me. Instead, I was drawn to the intimacy between partners, creative partners, and how deep and profound the process of sharing an artistic identity must be. The film was shot,

I'm assuming at 60 frames per second, this makes the image move twice as slowly as is natural, allowing the viewer to linger on the sensuality of the needle prick, and the kinetic reality of the pressures of blood in our veins, willing to flow out of us if given an opportunity. In this piece, the blood of one unites with the blood of the other, making them seemingly connected as an organism. Issues of race or sex or politics or history dissolve in the presence of two people opening their veins to one another.

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Post Industrial Landscape with Edward Burtynsky and Andreas Gursky

Chelsea becomes such a blur anymore. I was up recently, scouring the art districts for fresh perspectives, talent without fanfare, vision, quiet strength. Didn't find much of that but I did find those familiar faces that we've come to rely on. Big names! Headlining Uber Artists!! The brave new world cannot be stopped and it's ambassadors have chronicled the spectacle. So what popped out at me the most were photographers!

I wandered into the Andreas Gursky show, the reigning champion of high brow photography and was struck by the work less as a result of content or composition and more as a result of size. The size alone of the pieces were so indulgent that I marveled at it in the way I marvel at indulgence in Damien Hurst's work. A visceral nauseous blast countervails the scale of these artist's works. And then, that's it. Shock and awe on the scale of Korea's Mass Games with all the implications that come with looking at a photograph of 300,000 people doing synchronized dancing.
There were three series in the show: a series of Japanese volcanic islands in the back gallery, several large photographs of the Mass Games, at least two formula 2 racing photographs that look like crystal clear "frozen in time" film stills, a quality I found mesmerizing and unappealing, and a smattering of photographs like the Bahrain racetrack shown above. Gursky's interests, at least visually, have to do with events that are far beyond the human scale, events and environments that abstract the human scale in a way that makes the whole human production seem alien, isolating and terrifying.

Gursky's pieces all exceeded 6' at the large dimension. When I think about them, they make me feel disgusted and disgusting, though they are profound and beautiful, in a soul-less way. It's the commodity nature of them. The concept is simple enough. Spectacle, polished and tweaked and ready for the dance.
A much quieter photography show was in the back of some well groomed, little gallery on the Chelsea street front. It was Edward Burtynsky's work on display for observation and contemplation in a discreet back room. All of the prints were framed and none were larger than four feet. There was a table in the middle of the room with several of his books so the curious connoisseur could peruse the menu to see what wasn't represented on the walls.

Burtynsky deals with the landscape and might be put out when he has to include the human beings who engage with these inhospitable environments. The works are documentarian, stark, featuring industrial scale environments with a whisperer's lament. His work sings a mourning song for the world as it changes. The world isn't dying. It's just perpetually changing and the change is painful and violent and the scars are beautiful.
Included in this exhibition were some photos of the Bangladeshi ship breaking yards, a few images from Vermont rock quarries and some more understated landscape pieces. Works of Burtynsky leave an impression, an unforgettable image. He shoots with a loose lens but knows his edges. His works, like Gursky's, are as easily enjoyed from the point of view of abstraction and formal issues as they are as narratives or reportage. But with Burtynsky's lens, the ravaged landscape and the viewer go somewhere intimate.