Roe Ethridge at Andrew Kreps
Pigeon (2001), C-print, 38 x 30 inches The relationship between a photograph's overt appearance and the technical ability of the artist is what inspires Roe Ethridge. His second solo exhibition, "The Bow," stresses an interest in nature both as a physical subject and as a process of realistic depiction. Ethridge could be considered a traditional artist, since his images are often either figures or landscapes. Each image is beautiful, yet each image of beauty obscures, or exacts through ironic counterpoint, an unseen context. The most blatantly romantic images, such as those in his "New York Water" series, Osgood Pond and Catskills , present what seem like nature pictorials straight out of Hallmark cards: the haze of late summer covering a large pond seen through a rise of fir trees, and a stream bubbling merrily through a bucolic landscape. Yet hidden in the obvious details are reasons why beauty lies to us, and why we let it. Nature is a backdrop of beautiful