SFist Reviews...22 Eyes at The Artaud Gallery

We don't need to deliver an art history lesson here -- by default,
American popular culture understands the importance of both the still
and moving image, as photography's social impact reveals itself daily
in the media, movies, and beyond. We are image hounds, hungry for the visual proof of world spectacle. 22 Eyes: Emerging Photography, hanging right now at The Artaud Gallery, offers a host of such evidence.

(Disclosure: two artists in this show, as well as show organizer Tanya Vlach of Colabrita, are friends of SFist, but are not known by the SFist writing this piece)

Friend of SFist Jessica Ingram’s C-prints begged for our voyeuristic eye as we entered the gallery; both (Only two? We wanted more!) make reference to Valentine’s Day, in all of its thoroughly cheap, commercial glory. Hilltop High (2005) zooms onto the belly of a very pregnant—and very young, we might assume—woman, whose swollen paunch is covered in juvenile proclamations of “love forever,” penned in blue Bic ink.

In Highway 33 (2005), a young boy sells cheap roses under a sad-looking umbrella covered in a feisty, saturated print of tropical fish, which does nothing to abate the scene’s forlornness. He is situated in front of railroad tracks, miles of desolate ground extending behind him, as if he’d been dropped from the sky—one would be surprised to hear he’d sold anything at all, really. In these works, Ingram burrows through the objects that signify “love,” reaching the powerful sense of human isolation that remains possible regardless of partnership, hearts, or butterflies.

Jane Grossenbacher’s photogravures treat humanity with a refined sort of elegance, as the photogravure process inevitably changes our perception of the final image. Her figures haunt scenes of life and death with sepia-toned melancholy; both Sleep (2005) and Nine (2005) conjure up a deeper sense of humility than the barrage of media images we’re used to, as Grossenbacher approaches her subjects with a sense of dignity and grace.

Both friend of SFist, Bayete Ross-Smith and Jeffrey Blankfort allow us a glimpse into distinct sub-cultures and through time passed by. Ross-Smith challenges the term “ladylike” in his series by the same name, delving into the increasingly-popular and graphically intense world of women’s boxing. Shot between 1966-1973, Blankfort’s black and white photographs transport us to an earlier version of Western Europe, as seen through the eyes of its common citizens.

22 Eyes is strongest here, in the work of those who capture the sometimes rough, yet always gloriously real side of our peculiar species.

Visit 22 Eyes: Emerging Photography at The Artaud Gallery until July 15th. Project Artaud Theater, 450 Florida Street (415.626.4370)