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.

Meredith Show Now Open!

My show Living in the Gaze is now up in the Rotunda Gallery in Meredith College's Johnson Hall, through November 14th. Good, friendly crowd at the Reception yesterday. Shannon Johnstone, a professor of  photography at Meredith (and a Southern Photographer We Look Out For on my Southern Photography blog), just sent me this image she took at the Reception. Shows my wife Terry, and me, and my friend Carson Boone (also a photographer of great accomplishment).

Living in the Gaze Show Forthcoming at Meredith College

I'm having a show of my work at Meredith College, opening with a reception from 2-4 pm on Sunday, September 12th, 2010, in the Rotunda of Johnson Hall. This will be a show of about 40 images that explore how we see and are seen by others and how we learn to present ourselves to be seen, performing before others both our desires for attention and our delight in our skill as performers.

 I'd make the case that we long for safety and companionship; we conceal ourselves within roles as well as costumes to cover the poor, bare forked animal with the garments of display. In a world rich in the technology of visual display, we are surrounded by images that provoke desire and model for us ways to express and achieve it. The dream world of beautiful images enables and confines, for it defines the cost of hope, the price of desire, the terms of solicitation. In the midst of it all, we make our own way, knowing that we may be freed or trapped by how we play the game.

As a photographer, I am implicated in the giving and taking of visions and revisions, of offering, of display, of performance or of self-definition. The artist sees, responds, frames, records, shapes, presents and therefore participates in the gaze.

 These images document my observations, even, sometimes, recording my own presence in the scene.  They make it possible for viewers to join in the gaze, to share in the delight or shame or annoyance. These photographs also distance us from what is before us, making the body – and the performance of its display – available for reflection as well as observation or participation.

You can check out the show in advance if you go here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jnwallphoto/sets/72157624591947917/


Hope to see you on September 12th, to see how all this works out.

Mexico Work at Blue Line Gallery

Work from my portfolio of images from Mexico, including Police Woman (Mexico City, 2008),  will be part of the 33rd Annual Open Show at the Blue Line Gallery of Roseville Arts!, in Roseville, CA, opening with a reception from 6:30-9:00 pm on Saturday, February 20th, 2010.

The show is up through April 9th, 2010. Blue Line Gallery is at 405 Vernon Street, Roseville, CA.

The juror was Shelly Willis, Public Art Administrator for the City and County of Sacramento, CA.

Opening Night at the B. Complex

Opening night of the ME.MY.SELF.EYE show at the B.Complex space in Atlanta, Saturday, September 26, 2009.

My image -- "The Artist Creates in MOMA" -- is the image to the right on the white panel to the left. 

The show is up through October 17th. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Honorable Mention in NC Photography Biennial

 

My body of work from Mexico, including my image Tortilla Chef (Santiago de Anaya, 2008), was awarded Honorable Mention in the North Carolina Photography Biennial Show which opened today at the Frankie Weems Gallery at Meredith College, in Raleigh, NC. The show is up through November 1st, 2009.

The juror was Deborah Willis, currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts of New York University.

The Artist in MOMA in Me.My.Self.Eye Show

 

My image The Artist Creates in the Museum of Modern Art has been selected for ME.MY.SELF.EYE, a show of self portraits at the B. Complex Artists Cooperative in Atlanta. The show opens Saturday, September 26th, 2009 with a reception from 6 to midnight and remains up through October 17th. 

The jurors for this show included Stacie Lindner, Managing Director, the contemporary; Susan Bridges, Director/Owner, Whitespace Gallery; and Steve Aishman, Faculty, Savannah College of Art & Design, This show is part of Atlanta Celebrates Photography 2009.

This image was made in MOMA in NYC in the spring of 2008, during a show called TAKE YOUR TIME featuring work by the installation artist Olafur Eliasson. Eliasson's room-filling works included elaborate play with shadow, color, light, and form and were all very interactive, putting viewers inside the work while making their shadows and movement part of the art work itself.

Eliasson is a photographer as well as a sculptor and designer with light. From my point of view, one of the most interesting moments in the show was moving into a space where, as I suddenly realized, the lighting was such that the world -- and the people around me -- looked as they do on black-and-white film, with no color, only tones of grey.

One of the installations -- called Space Reversal -- was a mirrored cubicle that extended outside the building, several stories up in the air. Here is another photographer's take on the same space. Combining windows with mirrors, the space provided the experience of being outside while inside, offering multiple perspectives on the observer and the observed.

This space also provided me the opportunity for an image for my "Artist-in-Museums" series,  making art at the moment of experiencing art as well as documenting the enabling as well as disabling roles of art institutions as they bring art to us while separating the world of artists into those who exhibit at MOMA and those (like me) who don't. Or at least not yet.