Finding Inspiration: LENSWORK

Julian Gordon

A shout for joy.  A story being told.  A whisper of introspection.  The current Coalition Gallery exhibit, "Lenswork" features the photographic art of Julian Gordon, Michael E. Smith, and Jennifer Bisbing.

The photomosaics by Gordon are multiple photo transfers mounted to canvases, and they are displayed on the gallery's center modular walls that seem to repeat the theme of pieces or parts making up a whole.  Because they are the largest work in the gallery and feature bright colors, they command the viewer's attention.  The theme of flowers and insects is repeated in the series as is the rough and immediate treatment of the process that reveals gaps between sections, folds, wrinkles, and even hand written identification marks on some of the separate sections.  The scale, color, subject, and treatment of the work seem to be a shout of joy.  Gordon is documenting a scientific inquiry and investigation, and inquisitive look at a subject.

Dawoud Bey (right) is represented in the MCA's collection and uses a grid of images to create a larger whole.  David Hockney (left) uses a similar technique in his camera works to a very different effect and is represented in the Art Institutes Collection.  (click on the images for information and attributions)

At the opposite end from Gordon's shout is Jennifer Bisbing's whisper.  The weed series consists of carefully composed, small scale, low contrast, black and white prints.  Their power is in their simplicity and subtleness.  As the old ad campaign said, "If you want to capture someone's attention, whisper." 

Although the weeds are easily recognizable as the ubiquitous plants that they are, Bisbing assigns titles to them designating a specific location.  To the viewer, it could be anywhere.  Through the titles we associate much more with the image whether it be questions about the  artist's intent, or our own associations with the subject. 

Bisbing's other work is also presenting atmospheric qualities through selective soft focus that seems to connote memory, nostalgia, and dream like images.  Bisbing says of her own work, “I have spent the last two summers traveling to remote areas of the United States. I capture land and American life that is reminiscent of 'Robert Franks’ The Americans' with my own personal approach: grainy, breezy, soft-focus images.  The MOCP (Museum of Contemporary Art)is my source of current and inspiring work. Uta Barth,(simple tones and shapes) Sally Mann (southern landscape), Harry Callahan, (weeds in the snow)." (click on the images for information and attributions)

Michael E. Smith shares some of Bisbing's dream-like qualities in his narrative series My Father's House.  The series pulls the viewer into the narrative through Smith's manipulation of the mechanics of photography that result in multiple exposures, distorted edges, and a reality based illusion.  In The Bedroom, Haunted Memories (right) shows an image as if we are looking through a portal, or key hole into a typical unremarkable bedroom.  Smith includes the edges of the negative in his prints that bring an association of "photographic evidence" to the series.

Directly in the center of this print is the reflected image of a little boy - the artist's childhood - eerily in profile, and yet there is no evidence of him, or anyone else in the room.  (detail, below)  The rest of the series relies on multiple exposures of the same basic view of the subject that often captures light from a window and reflections in a mirror.  The end result of the multiple exposures seems to question reality, and at the same time the numbers and demarcations on the edge of the film present the facts.

Lenswork is curated by Susan Aurinko who catches the attention of visitors through the window as they approach the gallery with the shout of Julian Gordon's photomosaics, presents the narrative series of Michael E. Smith along the longest walls to pull viewers into the space, and offers reflection and contemplation with the captivating whisper in the work of Jennifer Bisbing.