Ever pursuing the classical modernist black-and-white straight photographic abstraction, and always breaking new paths, overcoming self-imposed challenges, and adding complexities to his images with each successive series, Paul Clark now stands on his highest ground by venturing into the surreal. Having experimented with shooting through barriers such as construction webbing, chain-link fences, and screening, Clark takes the layered look a step further by shifting his focus to what lies beyond the veil with intense and compelling effect. In a scene from a grim fairy tale, Clark has taken advantage of the nuanced interplay of light and shadow to show us, through deformed plastic webbing, a shimmering and gleaming white house backgrounded by a black semi-circle. Taking layering to its most concentrated extremities, Clark shot through a chain-link fence in front of torn and flapping construction fabric, behind which webbing had been erected; the result is an exceedingly complex image that integrates a visual force field of innumerable textures, intricate designs and bold chiaroscuro into shapes reminiscent of ancient pyramids. Having eschewed representational content in the recent past, Clark has now made himself its master. (Michael Weinstein)
Through July 23 at The Architrouve, 1433 West Chicago.
Related Stories
For Us: A Review of "Something from Something" at Engage Projects Kushala Vora and Adia Sykes’ collaboration "Something from Something" tells us as viewers that knowledge, art, creation, inspiration, love—really anything you can think of—has a place of origin.
Looking Down: A Review of Bob Tanner at Perspective After the loss of his wife, Bob Tanner made two photography series, “At Ocean’s Edge” and “At Winter’s Edge,” that are shown in this meditative show filled with graceful visual poetry.
Women Behind the Lens: A Review of "From Her to Eternity" Courtney Love curates on the street. Just west of Wabash on the corner of Eighth Street, there is a wall of stellar rock star images that includes a special collection made by women photographers over the years.
Microcosm: A Review of “Dialogues” at Patron Through each artist-relationship, "Dialogues" offers the viewer a rare opportunity to witness the direct connections that flow through the electric nervous system that both infiltrates and generates Chicago's art world.
Other Forces: A Review of Maw at Apparatus Projects Ailes and Lopez’s installations, images and sculptures function as a cosmos of life—worlds where the viewer is placed in a disordered exercise of cognitive sense-making between rather than sense-making of.
Complicating the Narrative: A Review of Them at Roots & Culture Featuring a cohesive body of works by Flor, Manal Kara and Caleb Yono, the exhibition is a stunning display of the magic that can happen when fixed ideas about artmaking and identity are thrown out the window.
RECOMMENDED
