Warhol, wetplates at Rule Gallery
Walking into Rule Gallery this month, it appears as if someone has raided a museum and put all the beautiful, antique glass photo plates on display. It is surprisng, then, to notice one of the models standing in modern clothes at the other end of the gallery, chatting away with friends.
Indeed, photographers Mark Sink and Kristen Hatgi harkened back to the early photographic method of wet plate collodion to capture scenes that are both antique and modern all at once.
A popular technique for photography in the 1800s, wetplate collodion creates an image that is almost ghostlike on the glass plate, and the images at Rule sparkle as if lit from some mysterious source.
On the other end of the gallery, Mark Sink’s photographs of Andy Warhol fill the walls for the show Untold Story. Smiling, laughing, and posing, Warhol looks amazing and real in these photos, giving viewers who are just crazy about the man (like your truly!) a feeling of being right there with the famed artist.
In the back of the gallery, Nathan Abel’s Stills showcase all-to-real scenes of lonely office buildlings, a hushed house, and blank, white trucks lined up on a street. Beautifully rendered, the scenes evoke both a sense of familiarity and loneliness. Evoking the solitary sense of suburban and even urban landscapes, the paintings are haunting, comforting, and at the same time disquieting. Staring at them in the series, I was reminded of the great David Byrne film True Stories, as they both capture the ennui, dread, and strange beauty of the human landscape so perfectly.
The shows run at Rule through Jan. 10th and are definitely something to see.
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