Review: Jed Fielding/Chicago Cultural Center

01_mc_61_1999 RECOMMENDED

An eerie brutality that is not entirely sadistic yet is deeply unsettling haunts Jed Fielding’s lucid and shadowed black-and-white portraits of blind children in Mexico, whose expressions run a gamut from joy, through tranquility, sadness, bewilderment and awe, to outright horror. In all cases, the subjects’ emotions are sharply delineated, seeming to lack self-conscious control over their release, and conveying a sense of vulnerability, which, of course, is fitting. The root of the disquiet that pervades the show is captured in a shot of a child’s wide-open eye that seems to stare intensely, although we know that it sees nothing. Leaving it for others to debate the ethical questions involved in Fielding’s project, its results show us how we use our gift of sight to do the face work in public that allows us to cover ourselves with masks that safeguard some shred of privacy and allow our social relations to move along. (Michael Weinstein)

Through July 5 at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington

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