–>We begin a new series of short reviews in celebration of our Decade of Artblog. Hope you will like them.–the Artblog editors————>
Ditta Baron Hoeber’s surreptitious cellphone photos, shot in taxicabs and trains, are images of restrained sumptuosity. They show toss-off moments, what others might discard as unworthy, the corner of a room instead of the room, the dark space beneath a car seat instead of who’s sitting in the car. These seemingly small slices of life were carefully selected by the poet-artist for their big aestheics — raking light, extremes of darkness and shapes of mystery. There is no mystery in garbage, which you will not see here. These shots of little corners of man-made spaces – the feet of a bench on a train — are sly shots, but filled with suspense. Arranged seemingly as they were shot — in sequences from two to a dozen – the small photos (most on the walls, some in books in glass vitrines) have a filmic quality. In fact they are quite film noir – seductive, a little voyeuristic, with color that is barely there and texture that is evident but undefinable. We look for the bodies and don’t find them — a knee maybe, a calf perhaps. Like other art done in transit – William Anastasi’s New York subway drawings, or Eileen Neff’s photos taken on Amtrak — the still images suggesting a voyage are narrative. But the story is not defined except to suggest a solitary traveler in the crowd and everything that brings to mind. The artist, who is a friend, will read her poetry in the gallery tomorrow night, Thursday, June 20, at 6PM, something she has never done before, fearing the photos might seem like illustrations of the words or vice versa.
Ditta Baron Hoeber: Proximity on view to August 31, 2013 at The Galleries at Moore. Words and Pictures in Proximity: poetry reading by Ditta Baron Hoeber June 20, 2013 6:00PM – 7:30PM in the Goldie Paley Gallery
