Pictures don’t do justice is a funny thing to say about a show, which comprises entirely of, you guessed it, pictures. But that’s exactly how I’d have captioned Austin Irving’s return to Wilding Cran in an Instagram story, with my go-to black, brown, and yellow flexing arms accentuated by a cutesy lightning bolt, except I only post — yes, you got it — pictures.
On a first glimpse, the photos look quite painterly. But the more accurate description is perhaps that these images are rather sculptural. The Z axis has been forcefully collapsed onto the surface of each picture; its three-dimensional property now rendered as M.C. Escher-esque structures, only deader and more devoid of animation, bearing almost nothing but varying values of gray. In “29th Street & 8th Ave, No. 1, New York, NY, 2016,” the darkest of the grays among all the photos appear as thin feathered lines, forming a smallest of the fissure that may have been a peek inside the gallery wall or perhaps deeper into a parallel universe hidden just behind the cleanly patched drywall.
While in the gallery with my wife, I couldn’t resist cracking the lamest of jokes — that I was looking at 50 shades of gray. I’m sorry, and I’m sorry that I digressed. Instead of drawing viewers into their corner, the pictures protrude, though not invasively, into the gallery space. Trying to feel the unobtrusive, invisible beams and planes diverging from the front of each picture is an exercise not dissimilar to deciphering what’s actually tactile or simply optical in Robert Irwin’s circular wall sculptures. Unlike their wholesome and self-contained geometric nature, however, Austin’s pictures faintly radiate diagonal and vertical beams that never meet again.
Did I tell you that everything Ms. Irving presents is an architectural detail? Her previous show in 2015 at this same gallery also comprised the pictures of building interiors, taken in different parts of the world during her travel. This time, the locations include Santa Monica, New York, and a few cities in India, at apartments and hospitals. In stark contrast to her previous series featuring gaudy colors and mysterious doors, both of which amped the romance, 13 photographs all exude an air of banality. Bland and blah, blah, blah, and yet they are oh so irresistible.
I wondered about the title of the show, “Cornered.” If the intent was just to be clever, that’s fine by me. But the word is a verb. What did she trap in the corner? Or was it her who had been cornered? Much like how Austin called her last show at the gallery “Not an Exit,” “Cornered” connotes the idea of pushing oneself to the edge of a cliff, except inside these nondescript structures there isn’t even a fall to be had. Escape is not an option and maybe that has been the prerequisite for the artist to turn these walls inside out.
Austin Irving (detail)
Austin Irving at Wilding Cran
Austin Irving (detail)
Austin Irving (detail)
Austin Irving (detail)
Straight from iPhone pics by author.
Austin Irving’s “Cornered” is on view at Wilding Cran Gallery on Santa Fe (http://wildingcran.com) from 6/3/2018 to 7/21/2018.
I really do enjoy Austin Irving's pictures... again... Pictures don’t do justice is a funny thing to say about a show, which comprises entirely of, you guessed it, pictures.