DISPATCH - June 4, 2011 (Saturday); 8:12 p.m.
SPRINGS, Long Island
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The works are meant to explore actions taken to “improve” appearances that sometimes, instead, strip away life or the spark of individuality.
Trentalange’s photographs are on an adjacent wall to photographs featuring Betty Boop and Barbie made by Andrea McCafferty.
The Barbie photographs feature the 1959 Barbie. The photographs seem to capture Barbie mid-adventure or in unguarded quiet moments.
The Betty Boop photographs get creative with the 1930s cartoon sex symbol. Sometimes there are many Betty Boops. Other times, only few or a single Betty Boop is caught in rough-and-tumble action or unusual spots.
Both series rely on sex symbols from the past to question body image attitudes of the present, said McCafferty.
The dolls were selected to generate smiles, channel nostalgia and raise potential battles between inner and outer beauty and public and private personas, McCafferty explained.
A pronounced unveiling of a dramatic series, WOMEN WHO SAVED THE WORLD, by Mark Seidenfeld is immediately evident. Seidenfeld has eight 17” by 22” archival pigment prints on view.
Each captures, mid-action, a weaponed woman battling an oversized monster. The images feel like classical Japanese monster movies only colorized, modernized and set in the Hamptons.
Seidenfeld said the series depicts “the struggle between good and evil that can only be overcome by the wisdom and clarity of the feminine principal.”
Further, the “She-Warriors are the embodiment of the mysteries, the moon and the tides. Victory doesn’t come from the ax of the king but from a maiden’s song.”
The photograph was made as an exploration of collaging and Photoshop’s capacities.
The photograph is meant to channel Camus’s philosophy that life is random, without meaning, absurd and is based upon chance, explained Stow.Photographs by Gerry Giliberti channel childhood in cupped hands. The series began in late 2009 when Giliberti placed a childhood family photo into a set of hands and created an image.
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The photograph felt like he was “holding his family in hands” and he decided to continue working with the hand motif, said Giliberti.
The hand cradling objects can be single or a pair.
Photographs include childhood objects, family photographs plus one happy accident—an eyeball recently given to Giliberti as part of a full plastic eye.
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A photograph from the series recently won an Honorable Mention at Guild Hall’s Artist Members Exhibition. A subtle kind of implied story can be found in photographs by George Mallis. In his case, images reveal what a search for beauty can render.
Mallis uses his camera lens to make artwork that imparts “beauty in its most sublime form,” he commented. “This sense of beauty really is about grace and harmony found in the natural world and the integration of the man made with the natural,” Mallis explained.
For me, these was evident in Mallis’s photograph, “Isolation.” The black and white image kept pulling me back for another look. Quietness settled and peace arose.
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“The beauty of the harmony of the universe becomes an ethical and spiritual force when it serves as a template for human activity,” Mallis offered.
“The truest depiction of beauty must employ the simplest of means, always striving for an idealized elegance.”
I was also drawn toward photographs by Mike Reale. Wide swathes of bright and vivid blues were accentuated by a judicious use of light. My imagination was especially pulled toward the photographs featuring a single house.
Patterns, curves and lines pulled my eye in photographs made by Alan Weinschel.
An electric orange beach fence set in a pure white background was puzzling and interesting. A photograph of greens and blues and watery stripes on a window was intriguing in a different way. After realizing both were made by the same photographer, I wanted to know more.
Weinschel's focus as photographer is “looking at ordinary everyday things and seeing them my way; sometimes by focusing on details, sometimes on shape and color.”
“What did you really see and what do you remember?” he queried.
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THE EAST END PHOTOGRAPHERS GROUP’S "SPRING PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION" remains on view through June 12, 2011 at Ashawagh Hall, Old Stone Highway, East Hampton. The show is open from 1 to 5 p.m. on Friday and noon to 5 p.m. this weekend. A Closing Reception takes place on Sunday, June 12 from 3 to 5 p.m. http://eastendphotogroup.org/
EXHIBITING ARTISTS: Includes Gerry Giliberti, Christina Stow, Alan Weinschel, George Mallis, Robert Wilson, Mark Seidenfeld, Mary Trentalange, Andrea McCaffrey, Daniel Schoenheimer, Michael Reale, Nick Tarr, Rosa Hanna Scott and others.
BASIC FACTS: The East End Photographers Group was founded in 1988 and had its first exhibition at Ashawagh Hall in 1990, according to its website. EEPG is the longest exhibiting arts organization at Ashawagh Hall with the exception of the Springs Improvement Society, according to EEPG. The group’s mission is to promote photography and the visual arts and do it in a community setting. It encourages photographers to exhibit new work at each show to foster the making of photographic art.
UPCOMING: THE EAST END PHOTOGRAPHERS GROUP'S "SUMMER CELEBRATION" at the Water Mill Museum, 41 Old Mill Road, Water Mill, NY. The show will be held from July 14 to August 7, 2011. A brunch reception kicks off the show on Sunday, July 17 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. http://watermillmuseum.org/index.html
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© 2011 Pat Rogers and Hamptons Art Hub. All rights reserved.
Thanks for all your great work in helping to get the work of our EEPG members out there. Your blog is just what the East End needed.