A Temperamental View | The Invisible Line Gallery

This show came largely out of a conversation with Anders Birger. Birger’s works have been mostly in and about Syria. The polaroid photos in the show are taken from scenes he encountered in the tumultuous country, but the negatives have not been removed. Birger gives a pen/pencil to the person present on that scene and asks them to write something on the back of the photos with no other instructions. The result is haunting. Photos that you will see nothing of, except for a few words. A name, a paragraph in Arabic, or descriptions such as: ‘This is the body of a woman who was killed by a mortar shell that fell on their house and killed this mother of seven.”

The other works are equally as great –some of them found the gallery just at the right time, such as the beautiful classically-made mega-close-ups by Michel Pincaut. Cyril Le Van sent his works from south of France, and his are photographic prints that are made into the object they were photographed of. Joe Hall is a young graduate who deals with space and illusions in landscapes in which you’re not sure if they’re a photo of a photo, or from another manipulated universe. And Brian Oldham, whose works I had come across online and admired, is a surreal-minded, California-based photographer who takes any liberty in making the initial capture into whatever he desires. A fish-boy caught on a hook? Why not.

The general theme of the show is photograph-as-object and you can read more about it in my curatorial text and see more on: www.tilgallery.com