Bending slightly forward and photographed in profile with her face and half of her torso silhouetted in shadows, John Opera’s nubile nude subject sits in bed with her arm crooked as she raises a glass of water to her lips meditatively. Opera has shot this dusky color image three times with almost identical poses, inviting viewers to look for the nearly imperceptible differences among them after having taken in the scene. Enlightenment is achieved when we look at the water in the half-filled glass; in one shot, the liquid has not yet reached the woman’s lips; in the next, it has connected and is dappled with spots of light; and in the last, the lit water has formed a black and gray cone. One must strain to dredge or squeeze meaning out of Opera’s scenes that like water are not flavored. What difference does difference make? (Michael Weinstein)
Through January 16 at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, 835 W. Washington
Second Sets: A Review of John Sparagana at Soccer Club Club Sparagana subverts the static documentation of a time-based medium by imbuing the image with an infinite set of potentialities—his blurred images shimmer like specters of time and space ready to unfold.
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