Of course, there were some individual works of merit that managed to stand out, including Kara Walker’s recent aggressive charcoal drawings (Brent Sikkema, New York); Serse’s stunning pencil drawing (Galleria Continua, San Gimignano); Patrick Jacob’s viewing lens “The Ortho Rooms, Dandelions” (Pierogi, Brooklyn); and Jee Sung Lee’s striking black and white ink jet print “Connect” (Carl Hammer Gallery, Chicago). Perhaps unfortunately, the Armory Show’s environment of an art fair is less than a conducive setting for intelligent and thoughtful art viewing, but is instead more of an art marketplace, or at best a brief art index of contemporary works.
The Armory Show’s website can be viewed at http://www.armoryshow.com.
Michael Flomen’s Higher Ground at Ricco Maresca Gallery
You’ve never seen this before. It’s new imagery when you thought everything had been done. It’s not outrageous or shocking or offensive. Rather, it is a series of genuine, thoughtful and innovative pictures by photographer Michael Flomen.
Flomen told The Crimson that he is “not interested in showing you things you would see.”
He works in the blissful solitude of the fields of northern Vermont. For him, art is the product of an intensely personal and meditative moment, like prayer. Art is “photographic evidence of the artistic process and the experience in nature.”
The photographs are taken in collaboration with nature. They are night-scapes where purely natural light punctuates the rich blacks of the night’s darkness. The stunning patterns of burning points of light, resembling unknown constellations or neural impulses, are radiant emanations generated solely by fireflies.
Strings of light spots flow through space like glowing pearls strung on immaterial thread. Swells of light diffuse and concentrate in delightful irregularity.
The scenes are at once microscopic and cosmic in scope. They are wrought with interpretative possibilities that give them a remarkable freshness in each viewing, while also possessing subtlety and nuance that builds on itself with time.