Review: Mike and Doug Starn/David Weinberg Gallery

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Once the wild-men fundamentalists of postmodern meta-photography, gaining fame (or notoriety) through the Duchampian gesture of ripping photographs and getting them displayed on gallery walls, the fabled Starn twins, Mike and Doug, have over the decades progressively atoned for their sin—or have undergone a spiritual growth process—and have now devoted themselves to creating, through painstaking lighting, color confections of precisely configured snowflakes that serve as glowing and exquisitely involved objects of meditation. From negation to affirmation, and minimalism to plenitude, the Starn twins have remained steadfast in their aim of deploying photography as a means of moving minds; although they labored for three years to perfect a process of capturing the snowflake on a glass plate and accentuating its intricate structure, the viewer has no interest in the artifice, but only in the captivating, pulsing result. (Michael Weinstein)

Mike and Doug Starn show through January 3 at David Weinberg Gallery, 300 W. Superior, (312)529-5090.

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