In a thoroughly postmodern take on pictorialist photography, which adopts the softly focused aesthetic of impressionism, German photo-artist Gert Wiedmaier has turned his lens on our sweet home, glued his prints to wooden plaques, applied color to the images here and there and—for the culmination of his process art—brushed endless coats of wax on them and a final topping of varnish, producing a smooth and seamless city bathed in muted blue-green, yellowish-brown and brownish-gray hazes. Wiedmaier is at his best when he shoots knots of people from above, depersonalizing them and blotting out their surroundings so that they seem to be suspended in a beautiful fog of alienation. Having subverted the mordantly precise modernist shots of lonely crowds from seventy years ago, Wiedmaier shows us masses who have passed through Jimi Hendrix’s purple haze, and we are content that there is no exit for them. (Michael Weinstein)
Through May 5 at Thomas Masters Gallery, 245 W. North Ave.
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