Opening: Friday, November 7 2008, 6-10pm
The artists in the exhibition Frame Line explore mechanical photography and its inherent relation to the human need to define place, time, and point of view. Photography by its very nature freezes fragments of the visual landscape, and hints at larger poetic meanings. This process can be empirical, through the subjective points of view and by the technology, essentially framing the world around us. Wyss has gone about this address using an even older means of representation, oil painting, while Rosenstreich chooses a large format camera. In both cases the artists undertake older technologies, reminding the viewer to slow down, and as a realization of the lineage in contemporary methods of photographic imaging.
Edmund Wyss’ approach to still life painting focuses on detailed renderings of mechanical forms, often drawing comparisons between weaponry and old photographic tools. Wyss emphasizes their historical realization and development, and the use of mathematical calculations to capture and control space – the camera enabled by lenses and weapons by the launching of projectiles. Formally, the paintings’ subjects dominate the viewer’s field of vision, with isolated and erased elements furthering spatial notions.
Aaron Rosenstreich takes up the camera itself, acting as voyeur in the landscape capturing our constructed environments. Rosenstreich uses a wide-angle lens, presenting us with an ocular view that draws parallels to human perception. This offers an inside/outside vantage of a personal machine capturing the larger common constructed landscape. The circular format is reminiscent of more natural forms, for the viewer this adds a peephole effect evoking the sense of being not only an observer but part of the machine too.
