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Adam Helms: Weight of Culture
Adam Helms uses an "outdated" photographic technique as well: photogravure, in which copper plates covered in gelatin record the image by means of incision. Helms applies this technique to several hundred images with more compositional than thematic resonance. The reproduced images Helms puts together sidestep narrative and instead allegorize Helms' fixation on a unifying theme of pathos. Some wall pieces are like high school yearbooks of the damned; a lineup of hooded Satanists abut a shot of eyeless, uniformed cult members next to a cluster of torture victims. It's not just the Manson Family, the KKK and Guantanamo, but the cold sickness they share.
And you don't get to look at these wall-mounted careful collages until you walk through a walled-in hallway of space, where both sides function as individual galleries. Also, the "hallway" entrance walls are painted in Technicolor bands. It's very The Wizard of Oz, or Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain; both references (or, really, whatever references you make) open you to the wall-mounted collection of pictures Helms combed the internet and his book collection for.
Helms told an Artpace interviewer that "there are no specific narratives I am seeking to create, only the impulse of the viewer to possibly seek one for themselves. In this way each image, or series of images, can carry a certain 'weight' to the relationship the viewer brings to the gallery."
Anna Krachey: Blue/Black
Krachey writes, in her Artpace presentation, "I see my work as one continuous body, not grouped into series."
In her installation, she accomplishes this really cleverly. During the press preview, she spoke of her weariness of the "normal" viewing in galleries; stand before one work, "get a read on it," side-step to the next. She has subverted this by posing her photographs together, encompassing one corner. You determine where your eyes go, taking in her brass-surfaced corner mirror, her images of horses, her harmonious color sense and exquisite detail, all images close in size and close together. It borders on the filmic, or the kind of comic book composition that encourages your gaze to roam, and then linger.
Krachey displays some 3D objects, too, handmade (by Krachey) leather sculptural furniture; neat little child-sized stools, a witty lawn chair. These, you have to orbit. Her work is undeniably beautiful, desirable; but what's genius is a command over your attention that also allows the mind to breathe. There's no side step, look, side-step, just a self-paced reverie of absorption.
International Artists-in-Residence, Free, Artpace, 445 N Main, (210) 212-4900, artpace.org. Through Jan 11
