Yes. These large-scale photos in the back room of the Hosfelt Gallery, SF, were real, of starlings swarming over Rome.
See what I mean?
I've seen footage of masses of birds swirling, undulating across some spring lake on the Serengeti, but something about these grainy black and white images struck me as surreal in a different, dark dream-like way. I fell into the atmospheric mood Richard Barnes creates in these particular, not-technicolor, images of bird clouds—like dust clouds, ominous and otherworldly.
What a find—and not even the main show, just a coupla photos in the back room. The main show is a group show, Summer Reading: Artists Interpret Literature with word & book works, cut-outs by British artist Su Blackwell especially endearing.
Barnes does work in color and in previous years, Hosfelt has shown a wonderful series taken in the back rooms of Natural History Museums. How I would like to see this work. Imagine this, Smithsonian (Zebra) in person at 48 x 60 inches large.
It recalls the series Richard Ross did in the 80s called Museology. This is light-boxed rhino is at the Field Museum, Chicago, 1986.
And then there's the great Thomas Struth gazing at glassy-eyed museum grazers.
Barely hanging on, weighted by the heavy load of culture (what else could it be?), these onlookers are at the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. In contradistinction, Hanging Cherry Branch, N 70, Düsseldorf is heavy with life: fecund multi-petaled blossom, light glinting off. This one of his exquisite flower photos.
Which leads me to tell of another happy find.
First, I found Richard Barnes tucked in the back room of a group show and then, downtown at Rena Bransten Gallery, Rebeca Bollinger represented by one photo in a group show called Dreamscapes.
These circles of light and blur are The End and The Beginning. Certainly the Alpha and Omega to me, the just-so, Above and Below, primordial first light (or last), full circle. Awe-some.
Like Barnes, Bollinger creates an atmosphere with abstraction and indistinction. Is it real? This is Left Hemisphere—the right brain approach: enter the flow of it, the presence of light flickerings, glimmerings. Quite extraordinary. See more here.
New find—new favorite.
Struth pics from ArtNet.
