DAVID GIBSON WRITING

The power of the photographic image has always been to stop time—to create instant artifacts. But these days, since digital media has overwhelmed the processes by which photographs are made, this original logic seems to have been turned upon its ear. How do we judge a static reality when images are considered as mere samples of perception rather than documents of beauty commingled with truth? It is equally a matter of the photographic image, the objective it depicts, and our approach to it. The photograph, if taken in consideration of static and transitory elements, can be said to share time with reality, because as a document it represents both the actual and the symbolic. The photographs of Leah Oates are meant as documents not of an object frozen in time, but animated by it. Hers is a visual register similar to the literary trope called “stream of consciousness” in which the perspective of the writer--in this case the artist or viewer—creates a fluidic narrative that af...

Pink Sky~North Shore c. 2050 (The Lessons of Rapa Nui), 45 x 56 in., Oil on Panel, 2007 If the need is pressing and the world is not forthcoming, then vision will dictate how the object of desire can be created (James Elkins, The Object Stares Back, pp 30-1). A picture is not only a view onto the world, or onto someone’s imagination: it is a peculiar kind of object that sets us thinking about desire…. Looking immediately activates desire, possession, violence, displeasure, pain, force, ambition, power, obligation, gratitude, longing…there seems to be no end to what seeing is, to how it is tangled with living and acting (Ibid).     It’s long been said, and much to the detriment of true understanding, that artists live outside of society; what artist really desire is to understand society. Once they have expressed this understanding in their work, they can begin to make their place in it. The recent paintings of Thomas Frontini are proof of this. They...

The paintings that fill Roya Farassat’s solo exhibition “A Mirror with Two Faces” present a variety of symbolic portraits that reflect the repressive social conditions in her homeland of Iran and the psychological repercussions that have resulted from them. What begins as a form of social critique gives way to a pantheon of ciphers and phantoms that are iconic and pathetic, expressive and opaque. We can view them alternately as a reflection of ourselves, or of a world in which we do not belong. Though they at first seem to resemble one another, subtle differences emerge from these images, which in their degree of symbolism are similar to ghost portraits popular during the Victorian era, or effigies constructed to perform rituals of vengeance. They are small in scale, creating an intimate viewing experience, like looking at family photographs. In truth, we are observing one large aspect of the psychological family of man, in which the various states of emotional existence are ...