German photo-artist Gordon Muehle chooses to pay homage to his “Heroes”—the people who have influenced his life (presumably for the better)—by running them through a postmodern photographic mill in which he takes close-up color Polaroid images of aspects of their faces, composes them into more-or-less coherent headshots, places those into settings that are presumably meaningful to his subjects, and then—as the finishing touch—places the photo-works behind a white grid that looks like super-elegant prison bars. The facial deformations attendant on Muehle’s practice call our attention to them, depersonalizing his subjects; putting them in virtual jail begs for psychoanalysis: Is he trying to capture his friends or punish them? In one case, Muehle is admirably direct; a bearded young man in a truck-driver’s t-shirt holds up his handcuffed wrists as he stares at us with an intense luminescent gaze. We can only imagine what the back story might be. (Michael Weinstein)
Lost in Translation: A Review of Crip* at Gallery 400 The strongest works in the exhibition succinctly express the ways the artist relates to their own body while calling out how the artist’s body and body of work has been perceived or coded against norms or ideals.
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