WHITE COLUMNS GALLERY
![Review by: Cheryl Tucker for The Artists Forum Magazine
Image: Lanya Snyder (courtesy of White Columns Gallery)
Edited by Amos White V for The Artists Forum, Inc.
GALLERY: White Columns: “One Week Only” Exhibit
“ONE WEEK ONLY”: A REVELATION OF LAYERS
NEW YORK, NY (Wednesday, July 30, 2008) A talkative, yet mellow crowd of patrons sauntered in and out of rooms on a warm summer's eve at the White Columns Gallery (www.whitecolumns.org) in Chelsea, sipping iced bottles of beer. They came for the exhibit “One Week Only” which, as the title suggests, ran only from July 30 through August 2, 2008. Lanya Snyder (whose work was also included) organized the exhibit, featuring the works of Faith Holland, Clara Jo, Emma Spertus, and Beny Wagner.
Snyder, Jo, and Wagner are all recent graduates of Bard College; Snyder and Jo were students of Bard’s renowned photography program headed by celebrated photographer Stephen Shore, and Wagner, from Bard’s studio arts program. The show presented an engaging mix of photography, video installations, painting, and a combination photo/installation exhibit.
In the main gallery, Lanya Snyder’s impressive, large landscape photographs commanded the space. As a whole, they showed scenes where nature and manmade images intersect: the Hoover Dam nestled inside the Black Canyon, a parking lot with green leaves bursting out of a cement wall.
Stephen Shore, who was present at the reception, is a large influence. “His works tend to combine the familiar and abstract; sometimes you can recognize where you are and sometimes you can’t,” said Snyder. She pointed to her work “Blank Canvas,” (www.lanyasnyder.com/new16.html) which shows a white wall with a block painted in grey to cover up graffiti. “You’d never know where that was taken,” she said. A nearby work called “Nightscape” (www.lanyasnyder.com/new9.html) clearly depicts Las Vegas.
“When you look at Stephen [Shore]’s work, it’s evident that you’re looking at work from a particular time. And so, subconsciously, I want my work to capture the present. That picture was taken in Los Angeles, that one in Nevada. I’m interested in the change in vegetation as you move across the country."
In another room, a video in Clara Jo’s installation, “Intermediary Devices”, shows a woman trying to create an arch out of white cubes in a grassy backyard setting (headphones provide the sound of birds and an occasional plane). After much tweaking, she completes the arch by placing the final piece on top; the feeling of satisfaction is palpable. But it’s gone in a second as she pushes in one side of the arch then the other to test the limits of balance. The piece is a meditation on the many layered stages of effort toward momentary completion—and how much we’ll risk before everything falls.
In Emma Spertus’ “Project Room: Door-to-Door Horror,” photographs line the shelves at eye level— each an architectural still from a horror movie. Seven tilted mirrors reveal what’s underneath. The shots are mostly in moody blue, black, and white, but the outer edges of the shelves painted pink, baby blue, and yellow offset the dark tone. Spertus is interested in dissecting the images of horror—when you break down the shots, what elements comprise a horrific image? Most images presented here are rather cozy and innocuous when taken out of context: a flight of stairs in a house, a teenager’s messy bedroom, a cozy cottage. Even the still of blood swirling with water down a shower drain from Psycho evokes more curiosity than fear. The only photos that had a chilling effect were shots of hallways: one was clearly the hotel shot in The Shining, another a prison hall lit by a dirty grey-green mist. Rather than being intrinsically horrific, the images expose the viewer’s dark associations lurking behind them.
Faith Holland’s “Bulletin Board” is a collection of six photographs displayed under glass on corkboard. Her most striking photograph,“Untitled (Armory 2005),” is a close-up of an African American woman’s face with a glowing superimposed image “strip” over her eyes, which, from a distance, looks like musical scales with clefs. When you get closer, however, the strip looks more like windows of an industrial building. Something that seems whimsical suddenly takes on an interpretation much grittier.
With his five paintings of variations on geometric shapes, Beny Wagner explores his fascination with the layered process of art. The artist explains in this quote from the White Columns press release: “The image that masks the last layer of paint represents the window into understanding the memory of paintings that no longer exist but were necessary to reach the final step.” Wagner’s abstract grids (symbolizing the grids painters sometimes paint onto a canvas and used as an aid in the first stages of composition) underscore the multilayered creative process to arrival, to completion.
I feel Wagner’s comment ties up this eclectic, short-run exhibit at White Columns best: each artist’s work in this show reveals intersecting layers—layers of landscape, of fear, of disparate images, and of the relentless effort for perfection.
WEB: www.whitecolumns.org
Cheryl Tucker is a freelance writer in Brooklyn, NY.](7_REVIEW__ONE_WEEK_ONLY_files/shapeimage_1.png)
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