THE WINDOW
Exhibition format:
IMAGES:
show long line with branchesS — ad second image as if continues, or one super long one
show installation DETAIL: ie a “close up of line with some verticle branching:
show individual images.
THE WINDOW:
[see previous descriptions). A portrait of the early 21st century. (diversity, tech, friality line.) A 247/365/1 — describe. A multiplicty of perspectives from a single perspective. A massive single work where the gestalt is even more interesting thatn the unique portraits that comprise it. The work resonates with On Kawara: durational. Mubyridge: movement. Hockney: multiple views. Japanese dark:…… Weegee/Cartier-Bresson street photography. Beyond photography there are references to film (a strip of images), social media and the internet (Archetypes: Greek, Tarot, Shakespeare. Time: pandemic, eclipse, war in ukraine, war in the middle east, contemporary issues of gender, gay rights, trucker protests, mental health, unhoused, …., politics. (The works, which are real people in public daily life, are the opposites of the staged and constructed works of the Vancouver school of photo-conceptualists, but, if various texts on the groupings is included, are similar to Ian Wallace, Ken Lum, etc.
LOCATION:
WHAT: an exhibition of 500+ images that reveals, due to its method of installation, multiple connections and narratvies across a very diverse set. A network of networks, narrative of narratives.
POV:
images from overhead, one window. google saellite, cctv, drone shots, birds eye view, allows phots to be taken w/o self consciousness of subject. allows ALL HOURS OF DAY… which don’t see much. unique location: DIVERSITYof people and ACTIVITY. photographs of conflict: fights, arguments, crime — which can not get in formal settings, and rarely in process.
A continous horizontal line of 200-500 images showing the full range of people (ethnicity, relgiion, class, sex, gender, sexuality, profession, age, ability, etc.) Branching off vertically (up or down) from certain photos are groupings of photos that are themeatically or visually related. If there are many photos thematically related, the vertical line could be a gridded massing above the image, or turn into a parallel line/massing.
THEMES:
multipllicity of views from one view. the views come from after the shots with thoughts
connections, networks across humanity: how similar
time - clock, duration, but connections across nonlinear time photo entanglement, one man across time, ephemeral moment: punch, jump,
public privacy, candid moments
archetypes - tarot, shakespeare
diversity/range of humanity
surveillance, drones. CCTV,
gentrification, urban
global local: pandemic, war in ukraine, truckers
gay trans
wealth/privelege
struggle
relationships: love, argument
selfies, social media,
mediated image - aware of being photographed or of watching eyes below hundreds of windows and passersby
as installatin: infinity, iterations, recombinations, music: sampling/remixing, collage
EXPERIENCE OF:
long looks, leaning in, repeat visitors. ambitous isn scale (not overwhelming or exhaustive) but like a book with chpaters or an opera in multiple acts. importantly, not every image is the perfect shot, or an obvious “exciting” or “unique individual”… just as songs have silence moments, or movies pause in the actin, some of the images are more banal (a family, walking)…..
also: gets more complex the more of it you experience: see more of the connections, and like a jigsaw puzzle will see the ‘whole picture’. you see and experience: repeated viewings: see narratives and other patterns
LINE OF PHOTOS: It is to be ambitious in length. It can extend around corners into other rooms.
SIZE OF IMAGE: images can be from very small (4x3”), encouraging a ‘lean in’ effect, to large (16x12”)
DIGITAL ITERATIONS:
SCALABLE: size of images and volume of images allows exhibitions of various scales, from enormous (all images at largest sizez) to smaller or even selected groupings for inclusion in other “themed” group exhibitoins.a
FORM: the work is modular: one large work composed of many modular parts, which enables multiple and endless exhibition possiblities of not just scale but form (arranged as one giant mass, as separate groupings, as connected lines, etc.) Hung by color, theme, chronological.
FRAMING: imanges can be framed to edge, matted and framed, or hung without frames (as in Wolfgan Tilmans exhibitions.). Wide matting can be used to create a more effect.
STORAGE: A 2000+ foot installation can be stored as a stack of 500 photos in a small box.
BRANCHES/NARRATVIES/MOTIFS: moments linked by formal, thematic, conceptual, temporal considerations (make examples but LINK to substack here): Verticality, selfies, tarot, the tempest, motion, dogs, smokers, dance, colors: orange, protests/flags, entanglement pairs, how far the man, how far the van, locations: the alley, the crosswalk, ; sequences: bottle collectors; Also a personal story: though never seen, the personal story of living working there, and ultimate eviction by the government for subway construction., silouhettes,
Text accompaniment?
emotional: joy, sadness, danger, friendship, arguments, love…. interspred with subtle personal/banal moments (sock on the windowsill, his children’s drawings in the garbag can as man roots throughs it)
NOTE: for exhibition proposal: see The Window as a network of photos not a single one. images are scene in relation to — the meaning might not be in single image but across images and subjects. As creating them logging descriptons in folders. as assembling have the catalog in my head, and i will see a photo and make associations. like one garbage truck had skull on it. kept in head. one day a gargabe truck came by and had ‘good life’ on it. so life/death same.
Branches:
trees across seasons
verticality
duos: entanglements
superheroes
smokers
sequences:
night shots
floating
historicals - greek etc
balloons
motion
gait
dance
race
fights - what you don’t see ever see in Lorca,
SEE ALL SUBSTACKS
BNACKGROUND:
The Window photographic work expands on ideas developed over the artist’s history. Collages composed of intercombinant discrete linear strips (Tokyo), evovling to remcombinant paintings on panels (Los Angeles) to paintingd remixable to sculptures (Toronto) to infinitely iterative large-scale modular installations (Banff Centre), as well as ambitious ephemeral installations (on snow, using weather) made permanent in photographs. All the works have a musical approach to visual composition — as if each image is a note in a larger song. (The artist has released music to four-star reviews in The Globe, Gazette, etc).
PARALELLS:
Gerhard Richters “Atlas” (but not found photography). Modular shfting presentations . But not blocks: lines and branches like a network
Philip Lorca diCorcia: street shots but also 1000 presented as line
David Hockeny: his composite portraits from polorods
Cartier-Bresson: decisive moment
gary winogrand: the very quick shot, no tweaking or composing, becomes gestural, movement of the hand seen in teh photo, “automatic photography”. awareness that many failures via volume will produce great images
Robert Frank: snapshot aesthetic: immediate, loose, sloppy, imperfect, blur, anger
William Eggleston: naturalism, ordinary subject matter, inclusion of power lines, trash, dumpsters, …
Viven Mayer (sp), everyday streetshots.
Diane Arbus: peopel constructing their own distinct visual identities, and subject of people with different abilities
Wolfgang Tilmans: shots of everyday people, nightlifte
Japanese photographers of blur and shadow (see substack)
Burtinkky: overhead views
Muybridge: sequences of motion
On Kawara: durational over time singel subject