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Las Manos Gallery, October 2005:
Las Manos Gallery Six artists deftly explore midwestern landscape, social, political and environmental themes using both mechanical and digital photography in this effective show at Las Manos Gallery in the Andersonville neighborhood on Chicago's north side. John Jacobsen, Jay Kapur, Jeremy Lawson, Mark DeBernardi, Michael McGuire, and Michelle Peterson-Albandoz are represented in the show that opened commemorating the Andersonville Arts Weekend held October 14, 15 and 16, 2005.
In the front gallery, Michelle Peterson-Albandoz departs from her previous art form of city landscape paintings on old windows to show us more subdued landscapes of digital prints, with hand-drawn or colored elements under a frosted translucent surface. Elements are clearly photographic in origin as one can make out the wind-blown surface of a beach in one work, or the tell-tale signs of tractor tracks on a farm field in another, that are rarely ever drawn patterns without the aid of a light table or projector. None of these works are named, titled, or numbered except by the title of Wounded Earth Series. All in this particular series have a chilling feel to them, a quiet hush, interrupted by subtle red, yellow, or orange highlights. Despite the obvious shown view of these landscapes, there is a definite human intervention happening within them. These are not bucolic, idealized landscapes, but rather, realistic scenes of human intrusion upon otherwise rural lands. In the gallery's back room, Ms. Peterson-Albandoz has more works in the same technique that are more colorful landscape representations, but focus on industrial themes. Or, in the case of a further series of these works, are artistic reactions to the more recent events surrounding the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, where flood waters engulf, float, or toss about homes, graves, churches and more in a disorderly fashion.
Also in the front gallery, Mark DeBernardi displays a number of mixed media works that begin with a photographic print process but are altered with traced, hand-drawn elements and ink stains. At first glance, one may think he is viewing a standard landscape scene, until one reads the title or views the print more carefully, as is the case with Emmett Till's Grave or Diamond Mine Disaster. In each of Mark DeBernardi's photographs we are led astray with a false sense of security as to what we are looking at, when in fact we are looking at places with historical or social impact, often with serious undertones. Some of Mr. DeBernardi's works seem more innocent in content and titles, such as Piedmont Italy, Lake Sirio, Caribbean Sea, and Italian Alps, while their rendering, particularly next to his other work including Kill Devil Hill, leaves one wondering what sinister plots lie beneath the innocent veneers. Themes such as these have, and are, being explored by many contemporary documentary photographers such as Joel Meyerowitz and Sallie Mann. Mark DeBernardi's work seems to look to the 'page 2' newspaper stories, disasters, and dramas that usually go overlooked, while his techniques present a more artful and human touch -- one could almost say compassionate -- than any straightforward photograph might yield. For example, the artist chooses to show the aftermath of the disaster, such as a grave site or a commemorative marker, instead of the actual site of tragedy. Yet, at the same time, there seems to be a moribundity or seriousness to these works in their stark contrast and warm deep black hues. There is definitely an artful travelogue happening here, a story-telling, and historical documentation.
John Jacobsen has five works in this exhibition, one from 2002 and four from 2004. It is his work The Great Plains, 2002, that is the most striking conceptually. A series of twelve landscapes in acrylic and laser tones on credit cards, The Great Plains infers a story, makes a veiled social comment, and is almost prophetic all at once. Each credit card houses a stark landscape, industrial in nature, almost monochromatic, and always in a wide-angle, one-point perspective. His comment here is not lost in conceptual limbo as is the case with much contemporary conceptual work. Mr. Jacobsen is keenly aware of what he wants to say about the circular engine of the money that fuels industry, that fuels both progress and destruction. Each one of the credit-cards could be a work unto itself: powerful together, they would work just as well individually. Seeing this 2002 series, one thinks it would be interesting to see what he could create using this theme in further works. Instead, two years later Jacobsen gives us digital montages of oversized and hand-colored astronomical images of the moon and sun in the backdrop to historical images of cowboys and dilapidated farmhouses. His concept in these four works, three of which are titled Planetary Convergence (featured works are selections I, III, and IV), and one titled Solar Convergence, is more watered-down and less incendiary than The Great Plains, but he is still portraying a historical and allegorical perspective of the Plains. One could interpret these works as the artist assigning astrological significance to a dead or dying life of the prairie. But this would be contrary to his earlier work The Great Plains -- it would be the cultural life of the prairie he is choosing to depict in the Planetary Convergence series that is the precursor to the heavy industrialization he condemns in The Great Plains. Needless to say, without further clues from the artist, the Planetary Convergence series has dueling underlying concepts, though artfully executed. Continuing with themes of human intervention in the environment are Michael McGuire's digital prints of Chicago and Lake Michigan. Mr. McGuire chooses to present a more mechanical view of landscape through digitally duplicated slices of the urban or natural landscape stitched together in long, narrow compositions, making a distinctive pattern. Where the repetitive pattern of these prints have a fun-house nature in their playfulness, such as in Lake Michigan at Briar St., July 1, 2005, 8:04 P.M. where the cloud pattern over Lake Michigan forms one large undulating wave, in many ways, they also have something to say about the way we become familiar with sense of place, societal infatuation with mass production and industrialization (in particular with the cityscapes), and call our attention to the randomness of nature. Mr. McGuire departs momentarily from his 'repetitive' theme in his large Lake Michigan, Aug. 8, 2005, 10:22-10:46 P.M., which forms the centerpiece of the exhibition. Multiple digital prints are overlapped to formulate a larger fish-eye view of Lake Michigan from the Chicago shoreline. Because this is a timed photo, streaks and balls of light from boats and airplanes dance on the horizon. The shoreline is a fortified wall that curves along the bottom, attempting to swallow in its arms the whole of the lake. On close inspection, whether intended or not, one cannot escape that this is a document of human intervention on a large scale, emphasized by Mr. McGuire's decision to print the photo in pieces to make a much larger picture than normal for the resolution of his original.
Jeremy Lawson chimes in with a more conventional series of photographs "where he gave each subject a plain brown paper bag and asked them to express themselves in a way they would want to be remembered. Each subject was asked to be naked to show their true self" (per the artist's note). Besides the play on traditional portraiture where portraits are supposed to look like and say something about the person in them, and the Monty Python-esque ridiculous anonymity created by asking each of his subjects to put a bag over their head, the most interesting point of this small experiment of four is that apparently the way these four subjects wished to be remembered wasn't so memorable (at least not without knowing more about the individuals themselves), and despite the artist's intent to show their "true self", the nudity is almost negligible (at least in any particular, uniquely-identifying way). The prints themselves are uniform in finish and are entertaining as a group. Perhaps the real message here is that haughtiness of concept usually doesn't play out with average individuals -- which is not a bad conclusion. It would be interesting to hear from the subjects themselves on how they felt their attempt at communicating their identity was or was not successful, because ultimately, art is about communicating with visuals and this was an experiment in seeing how these "subjects" could communicate their identity with a plain brown paper bag. Finally, Jay N. Kapur presents a graphic compilation entitled The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (no date), a series of thirteen note-cards with text, images and graphics taken from various sources. The series itself takes on a dadaist quality in that the juxtaposed images in general have no relationship to anything else on the card, except graphically; but the compositions are interesting and well put together. One could dismiss this series as an artful graphic design concept if it weren't for the thirteenth (or first) card which is a textbook description of mechanical reproduction. Though the message is a simple one, there is at least a comment about the "cheapness" of mechanically reproduced art. Which is curious, considering the show focuses mostly on digital or photographic processes which are inherently mechanical reproductions. Mr. Kapur buttresses this supposed folly with the fact that though the artwork he presents is mechanical reproduction at its core, there is still an 'art' to design and presentation that is impossible to manufacture without human intervention. No matter what kind of reproduction there is, no matter what machine makes the marks (like tractor trailer tracks in a field, the location and placement of machinery in a landscape, the placement of commemorative markers and grave sites, the streaks of light left by airplanes and boats on a horizon in a time-lapse photograph), there will always be human intervention in the creation of art. Throughout this exhibit, successful examples show human relationships to art, landscape, environment, and sometimes, societal consequence. Each artist displays a delightful level of mastery in their work. Las Manos is way off the beaten path of the River North or West Loop Gate galleries, but this show is just one of the many reasons that make Chicago a great art city, and Las Manos Gallery a must-visit destination. This extremely well brought together show will be up through October 25. --Richard Donagrandi Richard Donagrandi is himself an artist and the Executive Producer of ArtScope.net. |
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