| Young Curators, New Ideas |
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Curator amani olu, the founding director of the Humble Arts Foundation (of, most recently, of March’s 31 under 31: Young Women in Art Photography at The Gallery at 3rd Ward), is a young curator himself. For the Young Curators, New Ideas exhibition (now until Sept. 6 at the Bond Street Gallery) he and his associates turn in a surprising group show Composed of seven different curators or curatorial groups working independently, it might be foolhardy to seek a unifying element. But shared themes do surface, especially those of struggle: between photographer and subject, between order and chaos, between the artificial and the genuine. Filtered through the eyes of both new and seasoned curators, they take on a renewed, insistent voice. Florida-based artist Charles Benton’s Opposing Photographers, curated by Michael Bühler-Rose, is a natural starting point, since it uses projectors pointed at opposite walls to place the viewer directly between two photographer’s sightlines, forcing one to confront what Benton sees as the inevitable tension between photographer and subject in an ingenious bit of meta-photography. Similarly, Lumi Tan presents Brian Bress’s chaotic-yet-familiar still as a way to force the eye to confront its own prejudices, and critic and photographer Amy Stein plunges headlong into an exploration of identity. Among Stein’s choices, Alix Smith’s portrait Constructed Identities I is a timeless piece of economic commentary, in its unexpected color scheme invoking the mood of the literature of two decades past. Its artifice fits well with Ofer Wolberger’s subversive trilogy, featuring a model in a plastic mask posing in a beach, a hotel bed, and the cemetery at Normandy, alone in each landscape, but never at home. Other curators also challenge expectation and explore tension. Hannah Whitaker, in Jon Feinstein’s presentation of minimalist natural elements, goes on a luminescent forest treasure hunt, while Talia Chetrit explores perspective, reducing night and day to pinpricks in blown-up, empty skies. Alana Celii and Grant Willing offer a portrait-heavy series drawn from the Fjord collective, including the alternative beauty of Mark McKnight’s nude Oleya and the self-conscious, juxtaposed humor of his Untitled (Frank’s Sea). Laurel Ptak tops off the show using the animated GIF, invented in 1987, to showcase 26 different photographers experimenting with the format. It’s surprisingly retro move for an exhibit that has its eye focused, down to its name, so unabashedly on the future. But a second look around the gallery indicates that the lenses of olu and his visionaries, with their 360-degree range, are clear and challenging from front to back.
-Claire Shefchik
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that sublimates its goal of focusing light on the current state of photography, while paying a silent nod to styles and struggles of the past, both eternal and ephemeral.
