Catherine Edelman can say with justice that her space is “the gallery that Michael Kenna built.” Since 1988, Edelman has delivered her walls over to Kenna’s atmospheric black-and-white environmental photographs, shot throughout the globe, all in the same soft and finely delineated style, seventeen times. Featuring recent images from Europe, Asia and the Middle East, among other far-flung places, Kenna’s present installment highlights the consistency of his position as the solitary shooter who hews to the modernist path of producing distinctively photographic beauty through contrasts of tonality and chiaroscuro. The effect is usually dreamlike reverie, but Kenna is also capable of evoking more tempestuous moods, as in two studies of the Huangshan mountains in China, in which the peaks rise up from roiling fog that resembles steam from an unseen furiously boiling cauldron. The secret of Kenna’s appeal to collectors is his ability to draw the eye into scenes that border on the sublime, yet are small enough and sufficiently domesticated to infuse awe with comfortable repose. (Michael Weinstein)
Through July 10 at Catherine Edelman Gallery, 300 W. Superior
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