Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Review of Meredith Show

Max Halperen says some very nice things about my Meredith show in the current issue of Raleigh Downtowner Magazine, free at downtown venues, or you can read it online if you go here

http://tinyurl.com/2a5j9ss

and click on pages 12-13 at the bottom of the site. My review starts at the bottom of the middle column on page 12 and continues at the top of the right column on that page.

Or, you can read it here:

Max says,

At Meredith College's Rotunda, John Wall has mounted a massive show of photographs titled Living in the Gaze. It reveals a perceptive eye that often finds the world at its most ironic. One of the most arresting is "Shoe Merchant" where a lovely, well-rounded woman sits, looking pensively outward, but one learns quickly enough that she is a carefully-carved, well-rounded dummy. The joke is on the viewer. In "Penelope," an elderly woman, walking alone, stares at a tall advertising kiosk in Paris, where a huge poster advertises "Penelope!" and sports three very youthful and gleeful women. Men gaze at women and images of women, women gaze at dressy female image and dummies. In "Shoe Merchant," we are the gazers. Wall is as astute technically and creatively as his subjects appear, but the images are beautifully focused and composed.

"Perceptive eye," "astute technically and creatively," "beautifully focused and composed" -- I'll take that any day.