Deborah Paauwe: Dark Fables
~ Innocence is a quality frequently misapplied to the young. It is a notion projected onto children by adults. Adolescents particularly crave knowledge and experience (if not actually academic learning). Childhood games typically anticipate what it might be like to be grown up (to be an agency in the world). A tiger cub leaping onto … Continue reading
Paula Luttringer
~ “Memory is not about ‘evidence’,” Paula Luttringer once said, “but about connecting with the ‘experience’ of the past.” That is very contemporary notion – full of the subjectivity of postmodernity. It is important to remember this because the work itself can look deceptively classical. Shot in a poetic-documentary style and rendered in the fine … Continue reading
Art without the artist
He glowed. His jacket and trousers were luminous, extending a soft halo around his fey frame. The allusions were, of course, immediately apparent: Alec Guinness in the classic Ealing satire, The Man in the White Suit (1951); Duane Michals’ subway commuter metamorphosing into a spiral galaxy (The Human Condition 1969) and any number of sub-Spielberg sci-fi … Continue reading
The Art of Sadness
There is a deep sadness and a disquieting peace in the work of Luis González Palma. Many of his images are portraits, close-cropped and large in scale. His subjects are the Mayan Indians of his homeland of Guatemala adorned with symbolic decoration drawn from both indigenous culture and Hispanic Catholicism. Indeed the images are filled … Continue reading
Atta Kim
South Korea is a country in rapid change. Its ancient Taoist and Buddhist traditions, the recent violent memories of the Korean and Vietnamese Wars and its current status as the world’s fastest growing consumer society maintain a powerful and complex dynamic. Atta Kim’s Museum Project, which he began in 1994, is a personal process of … Continue reading
