Quick Notes: Czar Kristoff's Configurations and Micaela Benedicto's Documenting Absence over at West Gallery
Czar Kristoff - Configurations Don't tell Czar, I prefer the exhibit version of Configurations. I'm not saying the book version is bad. It's just there is a difference in seeing his vision of the construction site as a space with beauty in a larger scale as compared to the ones in the book. Also incorporating elements of the construction site in the space connotes a certain hollowness of all the changes we do to spaces. He also used materials and papers not necessarily aligned with photography which puts the space allotted for beauty into an odd place. It is interesting in execution and of course the photos are not straight forward. He also asks you to bring rocks. Why would you bring one? But the question should be do you see value in one? I'd go to say that configurations is his best work yet. This exhibition deserves to be seen. I'm not surprised the the book is being well received.
Micaela Benedicto - Documenting Absence
Some of the pieces in Documenting Abesence is a great example of photography used as an object. It's not the central star in these sculptures but I was surprised that she felt it was necessary to use the medium. I am thankful that she did. To photograph is to preserve and she tries to preserve nothingness or an unconscious self (which is obvious in one of the pieces not shown here). But these boxes that contains the photographs of objects inside them has that feeling of trying to make sense from something lost. Perhaps a struggle holding on to something? If I'm not mistaken, she had a recent loss of a loved one and perhaps this work is a reflection of that.
Either way, the photographs will make Lazlo Moholy Nagy and Man Ray proud.
Her sculptures deserves to be seen.
Configurations and Documenting Absence together with Gino Bueza's paintings in Systems of Control and Pete Jimenez's sculptures in Shapes of the Heart and Other Shapes are on display until July 16 over at West Gallery