Human Conditions
May 31 - August 20, 2005
Reception: June 2
Participating artists: Emily J. Denlinger, Sarah Hobbs, Jason Hughes, Wes Kline, Kelly Maron, John Morris, Dan Schlapbach, Jacqueline Schlossman, Arthur Soontornsaratool, Allison Turrell, Edward Winter, Ed Worteck
The twelve artists in Human Conditions represent a broad continuum of contemporary photographic practices and concerns. The works in this exhibition range from highly constructed images that are every bit as fantastical as the worlds created by Hieronymus Bosch (and every bit as connected to real world concerns as those paintings), to quietly astute observations of landscapes, buildings and slices of space, to explorations of the human form that ask as many questions about the nature of photography as they do about what it means to be human.
A sly playfulness functions almost as a material support in many of the photographs, and this subtle accumulation of odd real world convergences and almost overwrought studio concoctions suggests that beauty, humor and gravity are not mutually exclusive. Ed Worteck shows us a partially wrapped barn that might please (or disappoint) Christo and Jean Claude while Wes Kline’s frozen figures literally point out photography’s ability to stop action and time. Kelly Maron asks us to look again and again and again—and although each look brings us more photographic description it moves us no closer to reading a psyche in a pair of eyes. Emily Denlinger treats the very serious subject of what it means to be female in the 21st century but makes us laugh so hard that we cry by combining the high tech world of digital imaging with the low tech mystique of homemade paper dolls. And in Jacqueline Schlossman’s Baltimore, it is the gentle digital tweaking of color that asks us to reconsider a speed hump and a now elegant pile of trash.
And of course there is the undeniable power of beauty at work: in Dan Schlapbach’s world that’s made to spin by a slow shutter speed and shallow depth of field, in the minutely descriptive detail of Edward Winter’s warmly cold landscapes, in the long slow roll of Jason Hughes’ rotating head, in the repetition of Sarah Hobbs’ candy wrappers and John Morris’ pathetic suburban bushes, in Allison Turrell’s nuclear Benedryl idyll and Arthur Soontornsaratool’s colorfully false memories.
Each one of these artist’s work can stand forcefully alone. Yet there is a different kind of satisfaction to be had and a different set of questions raised when images begin to converse with other images, and when the opposing camps of the seemingly real and the blatantly fictitious come together to make something else. In this time of divisive extremes, it is heartening to see opposites attract.
Read the Review in the Baltimore Sun›
Read the Review in City Paper›
