When writing about art, I focus on the immersive visual, mental, and emotional experience that the work inspires. I provide vibrant but concise descriptions of images with an eye to the harmony of craft and concept. Beyond the image surface, I offer historical and social context while recounting the mood created by the unique convergence of art, venue, and viewer.
A FEW BRIEF EXCERPTS
Little is left in the apartments of “Orchard Park,” but what does grace these rooms is a great deal of rich and supple light. Many walls feature what looks like distinctly modernist art pieces, silhouetted collaborations between the sun and the window’s shape. Other rooms contain literal beams of light, rays spanning from window to opposite wall in a hopeless structural gesture considering the building’s numbered days. Darkness has a monumental presence here, too. Robust contrast lends mass to the shadows, as if the blackness filling the corners of these rooms could be scooped up like a shovelful of coal.
A Tribute to Light Itself: Andy Lock’s “Orchard Park” | City Newspaper, Rochester, New York, Apr. 15, 2009
Photographs can transcend the visual, triggering feelings so strong as to be palpable. This fact could not be more odd: most photographs are insistently flat, odorless, and lacking any obvious texture. But we can feel the warmth of the sand against the model’s skin in an Edward Weston nude, or smell the citrus essence left by an orange peel in an Elinor Carucci photograph. Beyond inspiring a swell of emotion, these images heighten the sensory experience of memory. Miyako Ishiuchi’s photographs, despite targeting our eyes, are astonishingly adept at tweaking senses beyond sight.
Palpable Visions: Miyako Ishiuchi | Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, 36.4
The ultimate symbol of fading passion in Soth’s work are the falls themselves. Like heated passion, the waters roil and churn as they approach a sheer cliff. Soth’s images imply that the test comes when a relationship plunges over the brink – if it survives this turning point, then passion will flow on as enduring love; if not, it will fade like the mists that rise from the falls’ basin.
Review of “Niagara” by Alec Soth | Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, 33.5