We Can’t Paint

If David La Spina is an extreme example of this aesthetic than you could defiantly say that Patricia Neligan is at the opposite end. Her photography may be a subtler example of this mish-mash style, but the work still retains many of its characteristics. Neligan’s series Vorübergehend, Abseitig, and Abseitig II are all beautifully shot; this is an artist who knows how to use colour and pattern to create photographs that hold your attention.

© Patricia Neligan

As you browse through her portfolio you notice the similarities in terms of subject and form that are present in La Spina’s photography. These include an emphasis on the ominous, or the uncanny, and a conceptual framing of the banal and uneventful. There are usually no grand claims in these photos. Any overt social commentary is left completely open; the viewer is clearly a participant in the most general sense.

© Patricia Neligan

© Patricia Neligan

This can also be seen in the photography of Michele Abeles, an artist who openly claims that she is, “drawn to portraiture because nothing is more fascinating, complex, ugly and beautiful than human beings”. This is perhaps a perfect explanation for this type of photography, an emphasis on everything which is both important and trivial, the good with the bad. In fact with the state of the world, its rampant fetishization of all media, this aesthetic is almost expected. It is a love affair with the seductive and taboo image that becomes at once candy-coated kitsch, disseminated into common acceptance.

The Young People Who Reminded Us Of Ourselves (BadLands Series), 2006© Michele Abeles

Abeles has a series titled BadLands in which one could very well mistake each photograph as a different work by a different photographer. From her statement:

In my photographs, I want there to be a sense of looming violence in the broadest sense. Like there is something boiling beneath the surface, I try to bring this out through my interactions with the subject and by attempting to imbue a sense of mystery and knowledge in image of my subjects. As a result, I hope a certain amount of tension and mystery will emanate from my pictures.

These are photographs that are very singular in appearance but ultimately still retain their cohesive whole. They are bound by an underlying feeling of unease and strangeness, an aspect that most of these cluster-fuck photographers have in common.

Vista Winter (BadLands Series), 2007© Michele Abeles

German Shepherds (BadLands Series), 2007© Michele Abeles

However, not all the work in this aesthetic is grounded in the doom and gloom of kitsch culture, some of it is downright playful.

To be continued on Friday.