Imagine being diagnosed with “rapidly cycling mixed state bipolar with schizoaffective disorder” (hearing alien voices in your head ), being a photographer, being on meds that allow you some clarity, isolating yourself in your digs, and recording your responses to your condition in straight toned scenario shots; and you will grasp Lauren Simonutti’s amazing project of projecting subjective images of mental disease into small-format silver gelatin contact prints. Simonutti’s images beckon us to look into the disorder—the good, the bad and the ugly; the sublime and the ridiculous—that always populates our own minds and is obscured by the controls that the ego slaps on to keep us believing that we have integral selves. The phantasmagoria of madness is concisely captured in “Helpless” where we see bundled and disheveled sheets surrounding an illuminated area where a stylized silhouetted horse stands starkly configured and obdurate—this is what imagination gives, devil take the hindmost. (Michael Weinstein)
Through March 6 at Catherine Edelman Gallery, 300 W. Superior
