The Elusive Surrounding, soon to close at C. Grimaldis Gallery, features work that--for the most part--has to do with our physical environment. As it happened the last time I saw the work Christopher Saah, I felt his was the most interesting, and his pieces perfectly embodying the exhibition's title.
This is a review I wrote of Saah's work in the 2006 MICA MFA show
Lasting First Impressions:
Artist Christopher Saah’s DISPLACEMNTS project offers a deceptively articulate introduction to MICA’s 2006 MFA thesis show which, frankly, peters both creatively and aesthetically as you move past the foyer. Saah’s work is a series of vignetted, color, digital prints that address the minute details of housing complex construction. Saah managed to tap a visual goldmine and beautifully communicates the imprint of man on natural material and essence of limbo in the building process.
Despite initial, minor annoyances, such as the unforgiving glare caused by the space’s poor lighting and digital artifacts upon close inspection of the prints, Saah’s small body of photographs kept me captivated for twice the time given to the rest of the included work, which seriously included a gigantic, stuffed beaver—my reaction to which was only “perhaps the joke, and art, was lost on me.” The images, archival pigment prints, are displayed in a small space, and appear to be arranged by similarity of content. The vignettes of the prints meet a murky, black matte atypical of traditional photography exhibition, which usually favors a white or complimentary, light color. The lonesome, quiet images are heavily green and yellow in hue and offer an alien, sickly feel.
They speak to the stagnation of futures lived in identical boxes, the pattern and unavoidable repetition in both the elements of process (tire tracks in mud, silhouetted housing frames) and in product.
But, here are some other highlights from The Elusive Surrounding:
Hidenori Ishii
Hidenori Ishii's "T(r)ee Po(o)0l
Krista Steinke's photos which I was pretty into, minus the masks
see maskless pix here
Sara Seidman watches Steinke's video piece. Dennis Farber's pieces in back left
Mary Temple's spring light
