There’s no place like home

THE EXHIBITION TITLE “Nothing Happens When You Stay at Home” is a sly rebuttal to popular photographer Elliot Erwitt, who once claimed that a photographer must go out into the world to find subjects to shoot. Both J. Robert Lennon, who suggested Elliot as a reference point, and Steve Poleskie, who first proposed this two—person show – currently up at Buffalo Street Books — present digital photographs taken from in and around their homes. The work is not as cozy as the theme might suggest; both artists wrest a sense of oddness from within the everyday.

Neither artist is easily pigeonholed as a photographer. Lennon is best known as a novelist and also records music (entertaining, if not brilliant) as the one—man indy rock band Inverse Room. He also performs with fellow musician—photographer James Spitznagel. He teaches English at Cornell.

Although Poleskie too is currently best known as a novelist, his history as a visual and performing artist stretches back half a century and encompasses phases of both abstract and representational painting of various stripes. (I am particularly fond of his early to mid—sixties realist period, during which he befriended the great painter Raphael Soyer.) Also in the sixties, he founded Chiron Press, the first fine art screenprinting studio in New York City. He is perhaps best known in international art circles for his “Sky Art” airplane performances – seemingly the antithesis of the reclusive lifestyle embodied in his current image—making. Although he retired from flying a little over a decade ago (along with his Cornell art—professorship of three decades), his interest in aeronautics continues to inform his fiction.

Poleskie acquired his current camera in a somewhat accidental manner. After achieving the status of emeritus professor, he was given annual grant money from Cornell – along with a five—year deadline for spending it all. Coming to the end of that period, and with money to spare, he made the impulsive decision to buy a digital camera at the school store. He has been photographing since 2004 and in 2006, he had a solo show at Ithaca’s (now sadly defunct) Upstairs Gallery.

His prints are highly consistent in both their subjects and their approach. Influenced by 17^th century Dutch still—life paintings, he photographs more—or—less incidental arrangements of household matter: fruit and cut flowers, tableware, reading material and packaging, eyeglasses and glass vessels. They suggest a sort of rustic and informal gentility. The lighting is natural: often with bright rays puncturing sections of an otherwise dark room.  Despite some richness of tone, the images are not quite as warm as they might be; Poleskie’s now antiquated camera seems to be the culprit. (He has told me that his further interest in photography is likely to last only as long as the camera does.)

Several of Poleskie’s pieces incorporate two images—one atop the other—behind single frames. Taken seconds apart and from more—or—less the same vantage point, these diptychs challenge the viewer to pay close attention to seemingly minute aspects of human perception—principally the shifting of light and shadow. The effect is to show us the unfamiliar in the everyday, the fluctuations through which we might see the stillness of still—life. In AD/BC the technique is played for sly humor: above, shadows frame a newspaper image of the Christ; below, they mask Him.

Lennon’s work is more varied and less hermetic in feeling. Mostly taken outdoors, they incorporate a variety of lighting to create a variety of moods: night and day, natural and artificial. The color and lighting tend toward the rich and saturated. Subjects are varied as well: leaves and grass, outsides of buildings, shadows and sky, chicken feet, shuttlecocks. The aptly titled Hobbit Door is particularly compelling, its extreme use of blurring and spatial distortion creating a comical focus on a central basement door—almost a like a hole in the image.

Not every photo works equally well. Chandelier feels almost willfully awkward in its composition, as if the artist casually swung his camera toward the ceiling. House with Clouds is the more successful of two nighttime scenes, deftly balancing cast and reflected artificial light with a ghostly, indeterminate light emanating from the sky.

Several of Lennon’s prints incorporate the human form, albeit in oblique ways. Statuette shows a tiny robed figurine perched on a window—ledge. The effect is meditative and gracefully formal. Eye, by contrast, produces a jarring, collage—like sensation—a close-up of someone’s bulging eyeball peers through a hole in a wooden fence. In To The Henhouse, we seen a darkly silhouetted nighttime figure from behind; the building he stands in front of casts a bright orange—tinted glow.

Two—person shows are often ad—hoc conjoinings, and “Nothing Happens” is not an exception. It’s easy enough to say that the two artists are exploring related territory (as they somewhat literally are). But the two sets of work feel very different in person—and yet not so different to a degree, or in a manner, that would compel the viewer towards some sort of rewarding synthesis.

Still, these are two able photographers presenting focused and compelling bodies of work. Poleskie’s images, in particular, are a must—see given the rarity of its showing. Knowing his ever—restless desire to move on to new things, its hard to tell when or even if we will next get a chance to see it.

The show’s method of display is also noteworthy: the framed inkjet prints of both artists have been hung on the wooden bookshelves that line the bookstore’s back room. This unorthodox approach is kinder to Lennon’s pieces, as they are both smaller and more variegated – they blend in nicely with the books and objets trouvés that surround them. Poleskie’s work, with its precarious balance of brittleness and grandeur, would be better served by a more formal presentation.

Tagged as: Art Review, Arthur Whitman, Buffalo Street Books, J. Robert Lennon, photography, Steve Poleskie