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    Art Review: Nick George’s Degrees of Freedom

    Contemporary photography, maybe epitomized in the popular consciousness by Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall, seems to discard Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment” in favor of a vivisection of the moment, something pushing against the limitations of the box of the camera and the box of the print. How much can you pour into the light captured by the aperture and the mirrors? I was reminded of all this while viewing Nick George’s riveting exhibition up at the Angela Meleca Gallery last weekend.

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    The show opens with three excerpts of series of smaller work. The most evocative of these are the two “Layer Cake” pieces, white orbs spinning sugar or light, practically dripping with it, against a background like night while flecks of brown, almost imperceptible until you get close, add static and grain. These two photographs are printed on non-glossy paper adding to the painterly quality, they almost have a religious element and seemed to vibrate off the wall, especially flanked by the monochromatic excerpts from the “Shiny Nothing” and “You Only Need 12 Squares” series. This collected work braces the viewer for what’s to come, get the synapses firing, like an amuse-bouche for the main course of the show.

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    That main course is four large photos “Weather” I-IV, not placed in numerical order. These all look up at a statue clearly hobbled if not outright destroyed, raw, jagged metal that looks like it used to be a man, from varying disorienting angles into a raining sky. Some of the photos use archival pigment printing, giving a patina of pink or brown that comes and goes across what the viewer sees, setting up an additional layer of looking through history while the viewer looks “up” into the rain. Scratches on the film are not removed and may even be accentuated, white lines coasting across the field of vision echoing what we see with the statue – the whole world looks damaged.

    As well as the damage, the photos are flecked with tiny spots of blue or grey or brown where the rain struck the lens. Along with the spectrum of gray in the color palette this gave me the impression of acid rain and supported the premise of a world in turmoil. A newspaper clipping in the middle of the four photos gives the truth away, this is a look at the 1970 bombing of a bronze cast of Rodin’s “The Thinker” in Cleveland, which creates a frission of awareness as the curve of a hairline or an arm takes on added significance.

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    By focusing so tightly on impressions of this statue, using it both as abstraction and investigation like poking at a wound, Nick George conjures up many allusions both obvious (Shelley’s “Ozymandias”, Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay”) and maybe a little less so (I found John Hiatt’s “Only the Song Survives” pop into my head completely unbidden). These four photographs paint a rich picture of something – society, somebody’s soul, art in general – on the brink. The crushing inevitability – the title is “Weather”, after all, not “Anomaly” and not “Tragedy” and not “Terror” – is the real hand around your heart in these pieces and if you’ve got any interest in photography I encourage you to get to the Angela Meleca Gallery to see this.

    Degrees of Freedom is on view at the Angela Meleca Gallery at 144 E State St from April 16 through May 23. For additional information and hours, please visit www.angelamelecagallery.com.

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    Richard Sanford
    Richard Sanfordhttp://sanfordspeaks.blogspot.com/
    Richard Sanford is a freelance contributor to Columbus Underground covering the city's vibrant theatre scene. You can find him seeking inspiration at a variety of bars, concert halls, performance spaces, museums and galleries.
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