Shenanigans for City Paper

LOL is an exhibition best appreciated for what it has accomplished rather than for what it touts itself to be. An exhibition of 24 working artists, most not well known, it has been well attended and largely well received by the Baltimore art community, making it a huge success for the Contemporary Museum, which has battled a slight case of irrelevancy to some of the younger art community since the Beautiful Loserstraveling exhibition in 2005. As a curatorial mission,LOL attempts to bring together artists working in various formats that affect an unsuspecting audience, surprise their viewers, and bring about change through pranks, real-life intervention in nongallery settings, and satirical re-examinations of daily life. The show is then divided by subsets of the admittedly loose umbrella term of “antic art,” breaking it into “Everyday Objects,” “Activist Antics,” “Artworld Pranks,” and “Theatrical Antics.” Categories are assigned to each room, “Theatrical” being divided over the video room and smallest gallery. At a glance, this order seems logical and helpful, but on top of creating some visual lulls, it highlights those pieces that don’t quite fit.

In the gallery’s front room, Joey Versoza exhibits two pieces that play on sports absurdity. In “Fuck Face,” Versoza tucks a Billy Ripken “error” card—the infamous baseball card that captures Ripken holding his “practice bat” with the piece’s title written legibly on the base below the grip—into the corner of a mirror, so the viewer sees his or her own face when inspecting the collector’s item. In more wholesome baseball humor, “Greeting Card” is a piece that Versoza included in an invitational small-works show and arranged to have signed by the oldest living relative of a Cincinnati Red upon its purchase.

Accompanying Versoza’s work is Jonathan Horowitz’s cutesy one-liner sculpture of a caricatured-beyond-recognition Hillary Clinton with the words hillary clinton is a person too written on the block below her feet. The bronze statue is impressive in scale, standing 6 feet high, and draws from a Warholian public figure appropriation and media skepticism, but it seems to have no larger relationship to “antic art,” which is used interchangeably with the term “prank” in the press release. Likewise, on the opposite wall of the front room, Ryan Mulligan’s rather charming mural, titled “When the Shit Hits the Fan,” depicts a grid array of life- and oversized survival gear, an imaginary checklist of supplies for his son in the event of a future catastrophe. This piece, which quotes from personal narrative and takes the form of a large illustration, seems to be the most irrelevant inclusion within the larger theme. Again, this is where ignoring the curatorial statement and organizational breakdown is recommended.

“Activist Antics,” in the side gallery, is the smallest grouping, though other exhibited works overlap into the category. Here artists record and present public interventions and satirical misinformation. Pieces include guerilla crosswalks, mockumentaries, ominous hazmat-style suits for the general public, and prank protest songs, attempting to address human rights, political hypocrisies, and scarred nationalism through a variety of media and performances.

Classified as “Theatric,” Nina Katchadourian’s brilliant (and most thematically fitting within her category) pieces are easy to overlook, looping on the corner television in the dark video room, but they shouldn’t be missed. Her two video pieces, “Carpark” and “Natural Car Alarms,” record real-world art interventions orchestrated by the artist and (in “Carpark”) her team of collaborators. “Carpark” documents a project that sorted Southwestern College’s vehicles, with the cooperation of their owners, into 14 different parking lots organized by color. News footage is combined with the artist’s interviews of affected drivers, showing the aerial view of the campus’ vehicles and individual musings, complaints, and compliments. In “Natural Car Alarms,” Katchadourian documents her recreation of car-alarm patterns using only bird sounds. The cars are parked in public places and alarms tripped. Art star Rob Pruitt makes an underwhelming appearance in theatrical pranks with “Kitlers,” a long scroll of cat images first seen in his Pattern and Degradation show at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in New York. The images, undoubtedly culled from the popular blog Cats That Look Like Hitler, are far less volatile than many of the other works created for Pattern and Degradation.

Heavy hitter William Powhida is the most notable of the “Artworld Pranks” artists displayed in the main gallery space. His sharp, witty art-world commentary, which takes the form of photorealistic drawings of lists on lined paper and annotated portrait diagrams and maps, have found their way into the collections of the audience they critique. Powhida outlines the wealth, nepotism, and egos in the art world, and finds these same insiders to be the most appreciative audience of his work. These clean pencil drawings have been featured in New York magazine and other widely read publications, both in reviews of the artist’s work and as art-political cartoons. Other work grouped with Powhida into “Artworld Pranks,” again, should shirk their label and be taken for what they are. Larry Hammerness displays a wall of celebrity breasts titled “Who’s Boobs?”; Larry Krone exhibits a series of mirror pieces, embellished with foil and acrylic phrases such as it gets better and story of my life.

LOL set out to bring together artists under one curatorial assignment, but instead exemplifies an ideal function of the Contemporary Museum in the Baltimore art landscape. By exhibiting fresh, contemporary art from national and international voices and various career stages, along with regional artists (Baltimore’s Katie Kehoe is included in the exhibition, although Washington, D.C.’s Patrick McDonough or Philadelphia-based Hennessy Youngman would have been good fits too), the museum is quickly regaining the attention of a hungry art community.

Unnatural Nature for City Paper

In his fourth solo exhibition at C. Grimaldis Gallery, The Nature of Things, veteran sculptor John Ruppert continues his ongoing conversation with geological forms and natural forces, while adding his less-exhibited photography and video to the mix. Ruppert’s known for his elegant metalwork and exceptional reproductions of natural objects, particularly pumpkins and splintered wood, and his current exhibition is overtly Zen. Concealed from the street with two large shades over the front window, which serve to obscure the bustling, unpredictable outdoor distractions from the calm gallery contents, The Nature of Things is an enclave of calm on North Charles Street.

At the front of the gallery, a large, deceptively realistic iron rock sits illuminated in the corner. The small manufactured boulder sits to the side of a wedge-shaped metal grid that supports the weight of a large metal object resting diagonally across the incline. “Sunken Grid With Strike” is a combination of inorganic metal mesh with one of Ruppert’s signature wood-like forms. Falling somewhere between the organized structures of Sol LeWitt and the natural arrangements of Andy Goldsworthy, the sculpture on its own is elegant and pleasantly simple. Ruppert adds an experimental video element, which had its Baltimore debut at Grimaldis at Area 405 in June of 2008. The accompanying video piece, a full frame of koi fish swimming slowly in a pond, was filmed last year during the artist’s trip to Shanghai. The piece is projected onto the floor and wall around and onto the sculpture, creating a lava-lamp effect, with slow-moving blobs of orange trapped within the visible frame edge. While algae, barnacles, or deep-sea imagery would have more directly suggested submersion, the koi steer the mood away from potential water anxiety and into an Eastern sensibility, which spills out into the rest of the exhibition.

Like a Zen garden, the elements in the exhibition sit within the minimal landscape of the long narrow gallery. In the rear room, a single piece, “Core With Rocks (2011),” a circular metal sculpture with three outlying cast-iron rocks, has a suggested expanding energy that (along with its large proportions) fills the entire divided exhibition space. Radiating in rings of wire mesh, which become more optically dense toward the center of the “core,” Ruppert’s sculpture mimics the calming, repetitive concentricity of water ripples—a more contemporary substitution, perhaps, for raked sand. Simultaneously delicate and imposing, “Core” pauses an imagined elemental pulse. Dramatically spot-lit as nature could never replicate, the constructed material qualities are enhanced—oxidized iron rocks glow a Martian red, the steel sparkles—and add their own unique allure.

Between the two open exhibition spaces, the artist has included a series of landscape photographs. These serene images of clouds, water, and hazy horizons directly freeze the atmospheric conditions and natural phenomena that serve as mental backdrops to the sculptural works: expansive dark clouds over a still coast, sunlight bursting through a murky sky. Ruppert’s photos, like his cast-rock reproductions, offer another impression of nature as it is seen and captured by the artist.

In addition to the gallery exhibition, Ruppert will be unveiling a three-day satellite show during this year’s Artscape festival at his Druid Hill Avenue studio. While the works at Grimaldis are all made within the past year, the studio show will include works from throughout the artist’s 20-plus-year Baltimore career, including pieces from his Lightning Strike series, Celestial series (rapid prototypes), and a chain-link sculpture, along with the debut of a new sound installation. In contrast to the pristine white gallery and bonsai-like control of each element within the Grimaldis space, the studio show will allow viewers a glimpse at the artist’s mental and physical workplace, where each piece has at some point been a work in progress.

The Nature of Things presents a series of constructed objects that defy their artificiality and create moments of suggested harmony between artist, observer, and nature. Transforming space into serene, meditative esplanades through organic pacing and order, Ruppert’s use of space, light, form, and texture affect the equilibrium of each piece in equal measure. By opening his studio to the public, Ruppert reveals his awareness and control of each of these elements throughout the entirety of his process.

Dynamic Duox - for City Paper

Photo by Michael Northrup

In the third installment of the Contemporary Museum’s recent Liste exhibitions, a rotating series of small solo shows, a number of gallerygoers entered a dark, curtained-off back room and emerged soon after, looking confused and slightly harassed. “I think it’s a gay thing,” said one shrugging woman to her disinterested male companion as they walked away.

Behind the curtain, a distorted song played at low volume and suspended hunks of melting ice encasing obscured objects dripped slowly into a fish tank, accompanied by the sound of the occasional plunk of a keychain or brooch breaking free and splashing down. A tiny video of two young men in a shower played on a cellphone attached to a semi-medical-looking bench, with a towel hand-customized with zippers, hand sanitizer, zebra-print keys, and a flashlight cryptically incorporated into the installation. Refraining from overt signifiers, the work dissected idiosyncratic aspects of contemporary gay culture, voyeurism, and the internet age. The installation was the work of DUOX.

In a short year and a half, DUOX, the name under which artists Malcolm Lomax and Daniel Wickerham (both ’09 Maryland Institute College of Art graduates) work collaboratively, has presented three major projects locally and a fourth at New York’s Bard College in March and April with what can only be described as exponential leaps in sophistication. Treating the sexual and abject in their work with triviality and a cool nonchalance, DUOX examines the way we represent ourselves in reality, through the filter of our sexual orientation, and as virtual avatars.

In past exhibitions King Me at Open Space and Museum of Modern Twink at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center on West Chase Street, DUOX’s approach to installing collaborative solo shows in large spaces has been maximal and a little overwhelming. Lomax and Wickerham’s modus operandi seemed to be filling the gaps between larger, more impressive works with a slew of small moments and humorous details, be it crushed snack cakes, articles of clothing, or magazines, the latter ranging in subject from fashion to pornography. DUOX’s rejection of the idea of an art exhibit as a typical assortment of pristine objects echoes their unconventional way of communicating about their work. When asked via e-mail to sum up these stray details into a description of their work, Wickerham rattles off a list: “Manifesto; Dynamic loading of content without refreshing a page; Hijacks preexisting forms; Approach and presentation as subject and not merely process; The City Self. The Virtual Self; The Private Self; The Hustler Self; Social Media and anti-social behavior. . . .”

According to Wickerham, their minds and works are a consistent buzz of absorption and output. “The amount of details and dense reading we consider reflect our time, which has access to so many things, BUT our work is never about that,” Wickerham writes. “Our work will take that kind of access for granted, as a readymade, and provide a show that is a simultaneous reality to the one we live in.” With each exhibition, DUOX has struck a more apt balance between individual works, overall aesthetics, and a repetitive set of references, due to the building momentum and ambition of their mounted exhibits.

Handsome, skinny, and fresh out of undergrad, Lomax and Wickerham jumped at the opportunity extended to them by Open Space in October 2009 to put together King Me, their first collaborative post-grad exhibition. While creating the work involved a lot of effort in and of itself, DUOX decided to coordinate additional events, produce an obtuse press release, hand-make its promotional postcards, and plan a cool exit from the opening in a car, which they parked halfway inside the gallery. While all this led to cheers and congratulations from peers and attendees, the overall installation—a sea of telephone books, sawhorses, string, and various surfaces layered with magazine clippings of genitalia and male celebrities—felt a little empty. Video works and beer cans were given equal visual weight, with both ideas and inside jokes unresolved and uncommunicated. The result was something like walking through the remnants of an awesome party that you had not attended.

Disconnected motifs and an obsession with minute details are acknowledged parts of DUOX’s art-making practice. Things that appear again and again in their installations are dry cleaners, zebra stripes, key chains, and the human body. “We are interested in the individual, the possibilities of one’s life, and finding new paths. So the work is never going to be just an example of us figuring that out, it will be more inclusive,” Wickerham writes.

DUOX’s Museum of Modern Twink, which was a part of Baltimore Pride last year, was an entirely self-motivated exhibition, from securing the space to promotion and manning the gallery for the duration of the show. In this show, Wickerham and Lomax chose to highlight pop-culture icons, brands, patterns, and the body (although in many cases dismembered pieces of the body) as subjects, with a tongue-in cheek preciousness. Reclaiming the idea of the museum and the viewing experience, DUOX hung a dense, loud show in the space. A large green wall work assembled from many smaller canvases featured the word ear spray-painted in the upper right corner, small clay masks in black and hot pink, the Fruit of the Loom logo painted on layered monochrome canvases, all hanging from the wall by a chain. On the opposite wall, a small painting of Justin Bieber and large photocopy prints of Casper the Friendly Ghost hung with the words missing and reward above and below the cartoon character. The center of the room was an eclectic array of floral-print cushions, magazines, blue and green heads on poles, bumblebee jackets, and a video of a young man being covered in baby powder and other materials by the artists. Microphones stood awaiting audience participation, and synchronized reading performances took place during the opening reception. Rather than include other artists, a survey of ideas, or be subject to a curator or theme, the show favored a fleeting sensibility through events (one-time performances), decay (crushed Zebra Cakes under Plexiglass), and crude installation with tape, chains, and clunky fixtures—the opposite of what we associate with an art museum. With their “museum,” DUOX questioned institutional methodology and the idea of art versus artifact, plus the increased pace at which that relationship is changing.

DUOX seems to work best under both time and space constraints. Selected by Sue Spaid from local gallery Open Space as one of its three nominees for Liste, Lomax and Wickerham were given a project room of approximately 11-feet-by-22-feet and only a few weeks from notification to exhibition to make the work for the show. “We weren’t even sure at the beginning of May what we were going to do for the Liste,” Wickerham writes. In the limitations of the small project space, the skill and adroitness of these two young artists was focused into three pieces: a video projection and two sculptures. Taking into consideration Liste’s quick turnaround, the late May opening, and the museum’s lack of air conditioning, DUOX created “Ice Purses,” which melted with a satisfying quickness during the opening and first day of the show. The purses themselves were two giant cubes of ice, with various objects (mouthwash, key chains, cell phones, CDs, etc.) frozen within, suspended from an engine hoist. As they melted, items would fall from them into a (fishless) fish tank below. Beneath the table, elements from past installations, zebra print and keychains, reappeared in a minimal arrangement.

In “Fur Bench,” the artists recreated a bench from a porn video, using soft white upholstery. Parts of the bench are faux finished with rock-spray paint, and a flat-screen TV is ratcheted to the bench as a shelf for the attached BlackBerry phone. The TV speakers play slow audio of Beyoncé’s “Disappear,” and the phone plays a video of the two artists wearing camouflage masks washing each other in the shower. The ice drips and altered audio in the dark room make for an uncomfortable, voyeuristic effect, like catching someone dancing in the mirror, stuck halfway between humor and intrusion.

When asked about humor in DUOX’s work, Lomax answers: “The humor in our work is to provide an alternative to mundane things . . . If we had to suggest a specific form of comedy, the work we do is more like stand up, sometimes self-deprecating, self-indulgent, but with hopes of arriving at something with substance. And we’re constantly ready to be heckled.” For the Liste installation, a video piece projected on the back wall of a figure in a hard hat lightened the mood with flashes of hand-made fashion, customized accessories (a flower-printed box cutter necklace), and a variety of carefully selected items on or around his person.

Reigning in their propensity for clutter and dense installation, DUOX rose to the occasion and presented a museum-quality show. Mixing a frank openness and humor with an ongoing interest in spectacle and style, their work was simultaneously concise and mysterious. “I hope people leave thinking more about themselves than us. And as they come into contact with more things, they see them with more potential, more flexibility,” Wickerham writes. And without further explanation, that’s what we’ll have to do.

I Was Perfect for City Paper (alternative oscars)

Read Full Article HERE

Best Of 2010 - Evan Moritz profile

Best Director

Evan Moritz

Annex Theater, annextheater.x10hosting.com

Evan Moritz is always up for a theatrical challenge. He co-wrote, -directed, and -toured a four-person dramatization of the Beowulf epic and created a large-scale, stage version of the 1973 animated Fantastic Planet, Moritz bolstering local DIY theater’s ambition. This year alone, Moritz—who previously preferred acting—has directed, collaboratively and solo, five major productions at multiple venues around the city.

Moritz was one of the founding members of Annex Theatre, which started in January 2008. Since its inception he has passionately helped organize the loosely structured production company into an accomplished nonprofit venture, actively expanding both its audience and its collaborative talent pool. Working with the Transmodern Festival, Exotic Hypnotic, and Whartscape, as well as touring productions in other cities, Moritz has helped bring Annex’s DIY craft to the forefront of the local arts community. With an earnestness and enthusiasm that brings out the best in both his colleagues and his audiences, Annex took on not only a wide-reaching program, but also a community focus.

While working as an after-school theater instructor at South Baltimore’s Baybrook Elementary and Middle School, Moritz met 14-year-old student and playwright Derek Carr. Carr passed Moritz The Dark World’s Destruction, a script he had written at 12, and started attending Annex’s local productions. Moritz, along with Annex member Rick Gerriets, received a Kresge Foundation grant this year, which the company used to help Carr bring his script to the stage. Annex members held workshops in their neighboring community offering local children the opportunity to get involved in costuming, set building, and other aspects of production. Through this outreach and encouragement, Annex’s immediate neighbors have embraced the group’s presence and are regular attendees at its performances and events.

Moritz, who sits on the nonprofit theater company’s board, recently completed a Western play and is organizing a DIY performance festival in Baltimore, which will bring similarly minded groups from Philadelphia, Providence, and Minneapolis to the city. Moritz also plans to pursue more serious theater pieces, such as Matsukaze, a contemporary take on Japanese Noh theater that he co-directed with Walker Teret and Justin Durel at the LOF/t in December 2009. The story of two Japanese sisters who pine for a deceased lover was a notable break from the typically comic productions mounted by local DIY groups. It’s a dramatic ambition that Moritz would like to see more of in the future—an abandonment of sarcasm, irony, and tongue-in-cheek humor in search of something more fulfilling.

Crafting A Future for Urbanite Magazine

Designers all over the world scrambled to do last-minute fittings, accessory pairings, and music selections as they prepared to unveil their new collections this fall. From her home in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Rachel Faller, who received her BFA in Fiber from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2008, did the same.

Faller arrived in the United States last week for a one-and-a-half month stint to participate in independent fashion events on both coasts. She presents her line of organic, fair-trade clothing at L.A.’s Green Initiative Humanitarian Fashion Show on Oct. 16—as well as at other shows in Boston, New York, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon.

click to enlarge

• KeoK’jay Design

For Faller, however, the glitz and excitement of the fashion world is just a side note to the accomplishments of her sixteen-person staff: nine HIV-positive women, one sewing instructor, two shopkeepers, one project director, two eager interns, and herself.

Two years ago, Faller, 23, founded a forward-thinking boutique in Cambodia called KeoK'jay—“fresh” in Khmer, the official language. Faller first conceived of KeoK'jay when she and a friend visited Cambodia in 2007. Fascinated by the country’s culture and traditional fabrics, she hatched a post-college plan to return to the country to study traditional textiles and fair-trade business models.

click to enlarge

• KeoK’jay Design

During her senior year, she continued her research and interest from afar, making work about the 1975-1979 Cambodian genocide, in which 1.7 million people lost their lives. She presented this work to the public in her commencement exhibition. Three months after graduating, Faller was on an airplane, heading back to Phnom Penh on a Fulbright scholarship to begin ten months of research and start her business on the side.

Most of the women Faller employs are widows who must choose between daytime jobs or caring for their children. Faller developed designs and techniques that the women would be able to produce at home with very little equipment. Through her growing familiarity with the culture and the community, Faller was inspired to craft contemporary accessories, clothing, and gifts out of traditional, organic, and recycled materials. Many of the fun, contemporary, bohemian designs feature prints that are hand-silkscreened with dyes made from Cambodian plants and minerals. Others are embellished with embroidery and patchwork appliqué.

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• KeoK’jay Design

“Quality is very important,” Faller explains. “Many of the crafts here are not well-made. We wanted to make quality, contemporary products. This way they are more exportable.”

With ten months of fair-trade and textile research under her belt, Faller’s business has taken off. KeoK'jay products can be found in shops in Australia, Norway, and Massachusetts, as well as in her two Cambodian boutiques, KeoK'jay main in Phnom Penh, and Circle boutique in Siem Reap, which Faller owns with another designer.

click to enlarge

• KeoK’jay Design

Eventually, Faller says she’d like to transition out of the day-to-day aspects of the business and encourage the staff to sustain the business on their own. She has taken on additional side projects, most recently in India, hoping to give the KeoK'jay sewers more independence, but she admits there is no clear end in sight for her involvement.

“I am coming to terms with the fact that it is necessary for a Western-based designer to be involved to make internationally marketable products,” she says. “The design training is just not available in Cambodia.” For now, she continues to be inspired by the strength of her co-workers and plans to stay in Cambodia as long as it takes to see the business thrive.

Size Matters for City Paper

A couple stands over a shiny wooden counter preparing parts of a meal in the photograph titled “Ben and Dawn.” Ben is looking down at the lump of hamburger meat in his hands, which hovers above a plate that sits at an impossible angle on the countertop. The inconsistent perspective makes the meat look foreign, nauseating. Dawn stands close to Ben chopping vegetables. In her right hand she holds the knife to the side of the diced pieces; her left arm extends an inordinate length, making her appear lopsided, and her left hand lays awkwardly on the cutting board. With a vacant expression on her face, Dawn doesn’t appear present in the activity. Her hair is unfixed, and falls over her left eye. Her dress is brightly patterned, and she isn’t wearing makeup. Ben and Dawn look like they might be getting ready to entertain, but they express no pleasure or excitement. And at its large scale—45 inches by 40 inches—this otherwise ordinary scene becomes uncomfortable, the figures trapped in the close-cropped composition.

The images in Commissure, Chicago-trained photographer Ben Gest’s solo exhibition of digital portraits, are pieced together and manipulated from multiple images of the same subject. In some cases, hundreds of photos are combined to make the final image. As in mannerist paintings, scale, perspective, and focus change slightly across the portraits’ compositions. Body parts are subtly elongated, an extended arm is disproportionately long, a floor appears vertical. The distortions are meant to call attention to the psychological unease and physical discomfort of familial relationships and day-to-day interactions, but they are not particularly jarring and in some cases barely noticeable. The process for creating these works is careful, meticulous, and precise, but the imagery remains cold and often bland.

Gest’s photographs here are easy to dislike, not for their lack of skill, but because Gest has a knack for making life look worse. Large-scale, formulaic portraits of the artist’s family and acquaintances overwhelm the gallery, allowing no visual pauses. Despite the high ceilings, the photographs are hung low, echoing their pedestrian imagery. The figures dice onions, unnervingly adjust earrings, contemplate laundry, and climb stairs. The extremely ordinary moments that Gest captures feel forced, emphasized in his subjects’ forlorn looks in every direction but at the lens. Poses appear awkward and false, and the resultant images rest somewhere between familiarity and spectacle.

Despite photographing his near and dear, Gest is unapologetic in his portrayals of them. Gray hairs, wrinkles, and unflattering facial expressions are exploited for thematic purposes: Subjects are frozen in their discomfort. The children he photographs appear similarly bored and anxious. Posed in normal settings, resting on couches and playing with pets or toys, child subjects come off as slovenly, lazy, even cranky. Fashions and household objects are commonplace and current, untested by potential nostalgia—which benefits photographers who work in a similar vein, such as William Eggleston. Unlike Eggleston, though, who also makes work investigating the mundane, Gest appears to find no poignancy in his subjects or their universal struggles: loneliness, aging, etc. Eggleston’s most iconic images, shot on film, have a warm, super-saturated quality that brings style and a small sense of glamour to even the most banal of images. Gest’s digital portraits favor cold light, cloudy skies, and florescent interiors. This overwhelming visual sigh means Gest’s more stunning images—“Tara Searching,” “Jennifer in Her Rooftop Garden,” and “William”—get lost in the abundance of similar photos. Mostly vertical compositions and tightly cropped portraits, the lack of diversity is purposely monotonous: Everywhere you look you’re confronted with the awkward routines of contemporary living.

Although slightly heavy-handed, Commissure is an exhibition that is worth seeing in person. The technical confidence and proficiency demonstrated in the production of each image becomes even more apparent at the prints’ significant scale. Peering into the often larger-than-life faces of figures caught in moments of self-awareness in life’s most average situations, you may remember the weight of your own obligations and inevitable behaviors. The photos become psychological mirrors, large, bold, and crisp. Gest illustrates, with unsettling frankness, the despondency of the human condition.