Balcony: Work by Holly Murkerson & Neal Vandenbergh
Distance, light, and atmosphere make their mark on the flat surface of the film negative or digital sensor. If desire is a horizon, then that horizon is now trapped in the emulsion –it is something that can now be held and possessed. However, as flat artifacts, photographs are dead spaces and cannot be entered physically. Arrangement and withholding are the tools that Holly Murkerson applies to the photographic object, acknowledging the limits of the seeing body – one image creating desire for another.
Neal Vandenbergh’s new work finds its political stakes in the surface of public space. Sculptures, drawings and video dwell on the what can be seen determining the what can be thought determining the what can be done (they’re all shiny). The perceiving subject is the social subject in the production of how it is possible to be in our perpetual here and now.