Framed as an exhibition of sculptural photography, With Cinder Blocks We Flatten Our Photographs brings seven contemporary artists into Romer Young Gallery for a minimal show of intriguing constructions. Plotting a course from the 1970s to the present, the show centers on work that capitalizes on the mutability of photographic materials and processes to transcend the flat plane and take on various three-dimensional shapes. The greatest pleasures in the exhibition come from pieces that challenge the viewer’s ability to understand their making, and fortunately, most of the works do elicit a cocked head and a “how did they do that?”
The first pieces in the room, a pair of flattened unique silver gelatin prints by C. Wright Daniel, hold all the creases and shadows of their construction. Using cameraless photography, the prints Untitled (Profile Portrait) and Untitled (Portrait) are so flat they almost conceal their own folds. In this instance, the works themselves are a document of their own making, leading smoothly to Pablo Guardiola’s work, an untitled photograph and small sculpture. His c-print shows two green-glass bottles on a concrete surface. Next to this, a single glass bottle sits on a shelf, filled with the shards of its former portrait companion.
Pablo GuardiolaOther works in the gallery are more opaque — literally. John Pearson’s cyanotype on fabric is a vibrant rectangle of draped cobalt cloth on the gallery’s back wall. A spattering of white spots and the periodic blocks of white around the fabric’s edges provide the only clues as to how the work was made. Laying the coated fabric on the desert ground, Pearson allowed the wind and dust to create their own star-like photogram on the silk. The popularity of cyanotypes right now makes it easy to dismiss Pearson’s piece as trendy, but I’ve never seen a cyanotype quite so large and quite so graceful as Untitled II, making it worth a second look.
Jonathan Runcio Untitled (Model 3)Rocks and rock-like concrete tie a number of works in the exhibition together. In the center of the gallery Jonathan Runcio’s Untitled (Model 3) casts a geometric shadow on the floor. Its complex steelwork supports an angled block of screenprinted concrete. The thinness of the metal contrasting with the weight of the concrete, Runcio’s piece is perfectly balanced. The screenprinted image (the show’s obligatory photographic tie in) could be a plan for the sculpture it now adorns. The materials further enforce this interpretation; they are more likely to be seen on a construction site than in a photography department.
New York-based Letha Wilson also makes creative use of concrete. Her three wall pieces, all muted images of rocky nature, present photographic images undulating across the surface of what look like shallow core samples. Black Foliage Concrete Bend, Bonita Cove Concrete Tondo, and Flaming Gorge Concrete Tondo blend c-prints emulsions with curing concrete, sealing the photograph to the surface with meticulous timing. The sculptures are small — only 11.5 inches in diameter — and extremely self-contained. In fact, the works in With Cinder Blocks We Flatten Our Photographs are all fairly hermetic. But shared materials and overt themes of doubling (again a handy photographic tie-in) lightly link the works to each other within the gallery.
