Saturday, April 09, 2005

Fresh Fiction at the MFA by Heidi Marston

There are only ten days left to see the exhibit "Fresh Fiction" curated by Ben Sloat, on view at the MFA, Boston in the education gallery. This exhibit includes many of my colleagues and a wide range of perspectives on personal narrative. From color photographs of things in someone’s refrigerator to black and white images of a single person in a room that could almost be still life, Ben has selected a group that all takes the traditional notion of narrative out of narrative. The works of the artists in “Fresh Fiction” don’t tell you the whole story, they don’t really tell you a story at all, and then again sometimes they do.

In Liza Corsillo’s photographs, a young girl makes elaborate theatrical sets in her backyard. She becomes a trapeze performer in a circus, and queen of the tea party. Upon closer inspection you may begin to see that these photographs look like illustrations for a children’s book, or maybe they are the grand delusions of a person who doesn’t want to grow up. With a “Big Fish” kind of stage they could be anything. For any of you who did not see “Big Fish” one of the prevailing ideas was that sometimes “Fiction” is the truth. Corsillo’s work looks like a story that was once based in truth and as it has been told over and over again until the original narrative is lost and the fun of story telling becomes the focus.

This reminds me of an article I read recently about choice. While we are no longer limited to being either a landscape photographer or taking portraits, what kind of photogrpahs do we take? The article was about the state of younger generations and thier infinate opportunies. Having so many choices oftern leads to no choice at all. Corsillo's character looks as though she has been given many choices and has chosen fantasy. When once apon a time we had to take one tyoe of photograph or the other, now we can chose to not chose. We can chose to simply make it up as we go along. Today I am going to run off and join the circus, tomorrow maybe I will do something else.

When I look at the work of Guillermo Srodek - Hart the narrative is the opposite of fiction. It is a story that we can all recognize: life and death. The color photographs of a small lamb in the foreground with a man walking behind in the background. At first glance is comical and kind of cute. The tag on the ear of the lamb is a bit disconcerting, does this man own him? Is this lamb being raised for food or wool? As I look at this photograph the life story of this little lamb unfolds in my mind, he is well fed, well taken care of and then he produces good wool so he lives to a grand old age. The other ending to this story is too sad to think about, and all the time in the back of my mind I realize I have been creating these narratives with little or no information being given to me by the artist. I guess because the lamb is cute I am compelled to finish his story.

Also included in Fresh Fiction is an image by Boru O’Brian O’Connell, recent recipient of the MFA Traveling Scholarship. His work in the Traveling Scholars exhibit was a group of portraits of young boys shot in the environments of their posh private schools. With all of the dramatic lighting and saturated color of an episode of the O.C. there was no way to not impose narrative upon these portraits. His image in Fresh Fiction is quite the opposite: a man alone on a small boat, nothing but sea around him, and he has a bag on his head. This is probably the loneliest photo I have ever seen, but then, it is staged, it has to be, right? To me it has an "Old Man and the Sea" reference while still looking very contemporary. Unlike his portriats that have many complex layers dealing with social class, privilage, wealth, youth, and famliy, the image in Fresh Fiction appears so simple. Simply, "what the Hell?" and then maybe "Oh I feel that way sometimes..."

Fresh Fiction gives me an overall sense of internal narrative that the audience gets to look in on, maybe we can relate, maybe we can't, but the stories read as fictional because I make them up in my mind. There seems to be a hint of truthfulness in some of the photographs: I believe that the things in that refrigerator would be there if I looked, but I don’t believe that a guy would row a boat with a bag on his head. So go check it out before “Fresh Fiction” ends on April, 18th, and you never had the opportunity to take a look and decide for yourself, do you believe that the lamb lived happily ever after? Do you think that guy ever buys groceries? Or is this all just made up?

Fresh Fiction – A Photographic Exploration of Narrative (Closing)
Education | Fine Arts
Start:
April 18, 2005 - 12:00pm
Location:
MFA
Curated by graduate student Benjamin Sloat, this exhibition presents work by SMFA students and recent graduates Steve Aishman, Liza Corsillo, Amber Duntley, Matt Gamber, Heidi Marston, Boru O’Brien O’Connell, Benjamin Sloat, Guillermo Srodek-Hart, and Youngsuk Suh. Rather than documenting the real, these artists use the camera primarily as a tool for creating artifice and inventing a story.

Click here to see Guillermo Srodek-Harts work:

  • http://www.heidiandsteve.us/gallery/guillermo/Animalia30.html
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