Alienating art photography and the Henry Open House (tonight!)

April 17, 12:03 PMSeattle Visual Arts ExaminerEleanor Pachaud

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The Embellishers (2007) - Isabel Pauwels - Video for television monitor

Tonight, the Henry Art Gallery will present Isabel Pauwels, the recipient of the biannual Brink Award. While browsing through Pauwels' online portfolio, I chatted with my sister about the recent trend in alienating photography. Though Pauwels isn't strictly a photographer -- she deals more in performance art and video installations -- her work presents a kind of artificial realism.

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me: can i ask you: do you understand he trend in ugly/weird/austere photography lately?

Elizabeth: cite some examples?

me: there was a show at howard house recently with all these gritty large-scale photographs of various places of civic involvement - a blue postal mailbox, a deserted classroom, an empty desk with a small bust and an american flag. isaac layman is a photographer too, though he does very high-resolution images that are stitched togeter from a very precise camera that takes thousands of little images. isabel pauwels (the Brink Award recipient at the Henry) does weird, surreal photography, too -- it seems to be deliberately alienating
http://www.catrionajeffries.com/b_i_pauwels_works.html

Elizabeth: in general, I really like work that is deliberately alienating, but hers seems too contrived for my taste

me: layman's work is really all about looking -- seeing minute details that you just gloss over when you take in an object as a whole. and yeah, i can like alienating work, too, because it can push you a little out of you comfort zone

Elizabeth: totally

me: but i'm not sure why it's a trend right now

Elizabeth: I think it's another branch of realism. people trying to make meaning out of something which is basically meaningless without a viewer. the images and objects within them need the viewer in order to possess any actual relevance

me: huh. that's really interesting.

me: but when these images/objects alienate the viewer...it seems to suggest that the images and objects have importance beyond the viewer'sbafflement about what they mean. the images become condescending

Elizabeth: the viewer is alienated because they are almost offended that they are being asked to look at something that they normally wouldn't bother to pay attention to. The images don't mean anything, the whole purpose of them is to force people to assign relevance to them. people believe that art has to "say something" or have some deeper meaning but these photos are annoying because there isn't a deeper meaning, just like a lot of the boring crap that happens in our lives. People can't accept meaninglessness

me: so you think it's a kind of nihilism?
...and don't you think that this trick is getting old?

Elizabeth: I suppose so, but I hate to give this woman that much credit. She annoys me. And yes, I think that as a deliberate tactic, it is getting old. One of the things I like about Jason's films is that they highlight very ordinary things but doesn't ask you to care about them. I hate that "isn't it all sooo real?" crap. If you want to show the real world for the awkward and clumsy place that it is, I don't have a problem with it, but this lady is seeking out things that are boring or plain or weird or alienating as a way of blowing that idea way out of proportion. She annoys me because she basically creates scenarios to serve her purpose instead of quietly documenting the real world and gleaning images from it.

me: but then, wouldn't it just be journalism? you could argue that the "art" comes specifically from the pretentious artifice of her photographs. they aren't real, and that's the point. they look real enough to pose as realism, but the content of the images is nonsense. that's very different from a documentary-like approach to looking at the trivial minutia of life.

Elizabeth: you're right. and that style annoys the hell out of me.

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Isabel Pauwels will be receiving the Brink Award from the Henry Art Gallery this evening at the Henry's Spring Open House. According to The Stranger, we likely won't see an exhibit of Pauwels' work until sometime next December.