RECOMMENDED
In a celebration of the surrealist imagination centered on the relations between human beings and the denuded natural landscape, the indomitable photographic team of Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison sets up scenarios and confects collages that feature improbable constructions and collections that are the frames of bizarre performances enacted by Robert. After they have shot their handiwork, the ParkeHarrisons proceed to apply paint and varnish subtly to their prints, endowing the resulting photo-works with a faded surface that renders their subjects slightly indistinct, as though they come from days gone by that we know never were, and are inaccessible to us. Although the ParkeHarrisons intend to make an ecological point, they end up delivering bittersweet shaggy-dog stories, as when we see Robert, with his back to us, sitting inertly in a large bird’s nest after he has taken off his shoes, which have been neatly placed on barren ground nearby. It’s environmental dada. (Michael Weinstein)
Through October 30 at Catherine Edelman Gallery, 300 West Superior