all photos: Lexie Moreland (first portion) AND Chris Chen (after the jump)
As was fully expected, the Sartorialist exhibit opening @ Adamson Gallery on Saturday was probably the party to have people lay their eyes on you, and vice versa this weekend.
It was also, for those who are wise enough, a chance to actually look at the photos on show, before all hell and every “fashionista” in the tri-state county (as Chris said) descends upon the Gallery on Wednesday when Scott Schuman will be present too.
Now onto the exhibit itself.
As Morgan said in her (terrific) preview…the joys of perusing The Sartorialist site can be summed up by the fact that you get a sort of a “behind-the-scenes” look at the fashion industry, it is the street style of both inspiration as aspiration.
And predictably enough, the show does feature Hamish Bowles and assorted leggy models on bycicles along with passers by, however, the photos do come in very basic 81/2 x 11 formats and while lovely, somehow don’t feed into the “larger than life expectations”.
Maybe David Adamson, in all his printing genius, has spoiled me in the past, with large, intricate, almost overwhelming interpretations of work but these, while perfectly balanced and wonderfully simple, had the exact opposite, underwhelming result.
More than one person walked up to me and said: “Didn’t you secretly wish these were bigger than you?”
And, I did.
And they did.
I wanted the fashion magazine experience blown up to real life proportions, I wanted images that would not normally fit on my computer screen, I wanted to see those 36″ inseams be 36 inches.
The answer to the formatting issue, I guess, lies in the fact that Scott’s really uses a very basic, non-large format, camera for his street shooting, and as such the quality would have been hugely compromised with bigger prints.
And if we’ve learned anything about David Adamson’s approach over the last few years is that quality is never compromised.
Still, a “what if” lingers.
As for the party guests, as fully expected, the everyone from Dissident Display men to DC concierge to Rachel from Project Beltway to Liz Gorman to our and pandahead’s Morgan to Amy from Treat to every photographer I ever had and every other band we ever photographed was there, everyone in their second best attire, waiting for Wednesday.
and in case those weren’t enough….some more by Chris:
why are my brows so expressive; angry. botox. i need botox.
March 17, 2008 at 12:22 pmApparently you’re angry at the stupid face I’m making, and taking it out on Thornley with a slap.
March 17, 2008 at 11:32 pmI didnt even know a photo was taken of me and my friend Brand Marc Higa…. I think The Sartorialist is impeccable
March 18, 2008 at 8:25 amI like how beforehand, my brother throws down a bottle of wine. Then I wait to tell him in the car that they serve free wine at the opening. Needless to say he was schwasted that night.
March 18, 2008 at 8:54 amthat while I understand how culturally relevant this Sartorialist character is to the blogosphere, and the people
above mentioned in writing there was no mention of the other openings last night, which were much much better. So seeing as I have the day off I will go ahead and do it for any Johnny come lately types who read this.
The Sartorialist show itself was underwhelming, and perhaps purposefully, larger than life photos often come off tacky especially when meant for a different viewing source. That being said 8n1/2 by 12n3/4 is not prime viewing for most people that really want to look at something hanging on a wall in a gallery. At that size they would have been more effective in a large print book. However they were all professionally hung so as not to give to much credit to any specific picture but rather to be viewed as a collection of individual pictures.
Next Door at G Fine Art was Dan Steinhilber. In recent years the DC art scene has suffered from a lack of sculptural forms that is not to say that there haven’t been any, as much as to say the forms themselves have often been poorly displayed, or to be more matter of fact, have improperly utilized the connection between the viewer the space and the figure itself. Upon entering the gallery even though crowded with opening goers the roughly 3 feet tall by 2 foot square black trashbags filled with packing peanuts and black plastic hose held their own. There were about 5 of them placed well over most of the middle of the room so as to provide each with it’s own territory while keeping them in close enough quarters for the viewer to compare one another and speculate on the techniques used to compress them in such odd shapes. While the material itself was left evident the process by which they were created was the subject of much speculative chatter, some goers speculated a heat gun, others that he hugged them all down to size, and more matter of fact people said he most likely did some sort of combination of both while gluing them together etc… Regardless of the creation myths the figures themselves were beautifully raw and contorted post modern sculptures.
On the walls hung large format portrait oriented pictures of shattering fluorescent tube lighting, and in a closed off section of the gallery was a display of real fluorescent tubes. Behind a curtain were many 3 or 4 foot tubes dangling in mid air flickering with almost no power going to them in a sort of soft wave. Often reflecting another set of tubes on the far wall, square and in line shimmering against the blackness of the room, finally in a tiny corner cut into the far wall were a few smaller tubes leaning into the makeshift corner and just barely functioning. The whole experience gave you (the viewer) a slow flood of visual emotion like closing your eyes under water just after staring at the sun, you have about a minute or two before your eyes fully adjust and the magic of the spectacle is gone, but it is still enjoyable after the initial shock. Overall for it’s use of space, and the classing up of trashy splendor the show was one of the more impressive sculptural installations of this season and perhaps even the recent few.
Upstairs At Hemphill was another great show. Franz Jantzen was showing photographs that were sort of aerial views of old buildings or events, they seemed very much like the old maps you would find in Nintendo “ower of levels for games like Legend of Zelda in the idea that they were composites of many different photographs blended together to give you an over all view of the building that you could never get from a firsthand view or an overhead singular perspective shot. Every picture had its own mystique and you could sort of let your mind wander in them for hours much like a zen painting. There are details upon details that you might suddenly discover, impacting your entire perspective over the rest of the work.
To me the standouts were McSorleys Bar, Loop Meditation, and The Conservator in his Laboratory.
go see more art.
-andrew
March 21, 2008 at 1:31 pmhey girl hey
April 17, 2008 at 3:52 am
My favorite photo: Ryan Wakeman, straight coolin’.
There were some dope examples of men’s footwear at this event.
March 17, 2008 at 8:00 am