PhotoDimensional

The Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago was the first ‘photo’ museum I had ever visit. Photography is something that I had definitely taken for granted. Digital photography and the fact that almost every cell phone these days is equipped with a camera has made this kind of art lost in my mind. It was refreshing to see the PhotoDimensional exhibit with these somewhat low expectations going in because I was pleasantly surprised after I left. This exhibit featured various artists presenting their idea of what happens when photography tries to break out of its natural 2’D realm, and into the 3-D. The works ranged from sculpture, video, photography, paintings, and incorporations of both photos and paintings.
One thing I noticed from the start was just how easily ‘space’ can be manipulated through the use of combining painting with photography. One such artist, David Ireland, worked with seascapes taken around where else? Ireland. In one of his works, Green rectangle over Skellig. Ireland takes the image of a desolate island made of rock, looking lonely in the ocean all by itself; and juxtaposes it against a solid green block of color, more or less dividing the photo into three parts. Two parts rock, one part green. This concept really messed with my perception because the solid green stood out so vividly against the black and white photo. My mind could not concentrate on which area to look at first, or which one was truly in the fore, or background. Similarly, Ireland’s other photo, Blood Dots and Rain over Ireland, was out of focus, and portrayed a rainy day in the ocean. On top of this photo, he pained large red blobs of color that force you to reconsider what you were looking at in the first place. Of all the works I saw, Ireland’s art seemed the most simple, but also stayed with me the longest.
Moving through the exhibit, I noticed the myriad of photos and sculptures were placed very far apart. It came to me that they were set up like this because photography needs to be seen by itself, and without distraction. I liked being able to look at the works uninterrupted and without other art distorting my frame of reference.
One piece, La Ronde, by Bettina Hoffmann was very disorienting. She took the concept of a still photograph, and added the art of multimedia. Her DVD concentrated on the idea of what would happen if you entered the scene of a photo mid snap, and walked around. The video rotated between scenes around a kitchen table, inside a bedroom, and living room. The result is mesmerizing, and very surreal because you seem to be repeating the moment this photo was taken over and over while you are frozen in time and space. I still don’t know how they got the subjects to stand so still throughout the whole ordeal, or how the camera swiveled around the photo so effortlessly.
One other artist that really thought captured the whole concept of ‘photodimensions’ was that of Florian Slotawa. I thought these photos were actually funny. His work, titled, Hotelarbeiten, consists of several pieces of furniture from hotels, crammed into one corner or side of the room. Again this reminded me how the concept of space is pretty abstract; given that a bed, desk, lamp, couch, and chair could so easily fit on top of each other in a room where they before took up all the space.
The last artist that I really found interesting was Pello Irazu. His work titled, La Fabrica, is made up of various drawings and paintings that are overlapped, kind of like David Ireland’s. His is more of a collage though because it is hard to decipher which came first, the painting or the photo. There is so much geometry going on in his pieces, whether it comes from the boxes and chairs he has stacked, or the boxes he has drawn on top that it makes me think of grade school. The use of primary colors adds to this illusion as well.
Before I went into this exhibit, I thought the idea of combining 3D concepts with 2D photography would be very muddled and might ruin the original photos. In the end though, the PhotoDimensional exhibit was captivating and I am looking forward to checking out future exhibits here on campus at the Museum of Contemporary Photography.