Group Show: Sweet Bird of Youth

Sweet Bird of Youth (inspired by the Tennessee Williams screenplay) is a photo-based exhibition that explores moments of expectation. Sterile buildings juxtapose bland portraits in a narrative about nothing specific. The work is insipidly open to interpretation. Sweet Bird of Youth invites the onlooker to play voyeur, sympathizer, mother, lover, depressed youth… as moments of extreme tension adjoin open-ended monotony.

Looking at the beginning of the mundane image ones turns to Bernd and Hilla Becher- masters of photographing the banal. A building front, shot at deadpan angles appears bland and timeless, placing importance on the moment the image is captured and the context of this moment. What becomes important is that which is implied by these images. The inevitable disintegration of this timeframe suggests there can only be a progression/digression from this point, and a past is implied. The viewer is led to feel a sense of timelessness reinforced by an implication of existentialism.

Similarly, a precarious instant is described by images of Rineke Dijkstra. A young girl stands fists clenched in a moment of angst. Over what, we are uncertain. But we appreciate her experience from our own associations of youth. The teenage character becomes an object in a landscape, symbolic of a time in life- and a signifier of what we associate with innocence and self-discovery. In our own sense of retrospect we become voyeurs in a cold scene of documentary. The girl becomes a symbol that expresses a time of life; her personal story irrelevant to our own narcissistic appreciation of the image.

We appreciate that Van Meene, in a comparable genre to Dijkstra, chooses to omit information and provide us with a similar cold, detached presentation. Again this allows us our own indulgence to read the image according to our own experience. Is it sexual? Are we saddened, sympathetic or even lustful? These images are both alienating in their failure to provide a complete narrative and at the same time gripping in the door left ajar for us to open and complete the experience. The viewer is fed morsels from a larger implied narrative that feeds the imagination.

As Nancy Spector states*, ‘photography is a content carrier rather than an aesthetic object’. Where this may not whole- heartedly be true of all the images in this exhibition, Spector’s theory can also be applied to Liam Gillick’s wall installation. Revised Negotiation Screen is a simple (dare I say ‘beautiful’) wall that alludes to an idea through the construction and the title of the piece. We are fascinated not so much by the effectiveness of the form before us, but by what the artist has chosen to omit. The sculptural object purposefully explains little, but implies meaning. This meaning often standing as an oxymoron to the sterility of the piece, creating a precarious tension and a realization that there is a flip side. We are manipulated to look within for an answer.

But it is perhaps Anna Gaskell’s images that exemplify omission. Her storyboard images entice the viewer with nostalgic signifiers like school uniforms and partially exposed limbs, expressing youthfulness and vulnerability. Gaskell gives us a slice, leaving us unsure whether the language is to be read as innocent or macabre. Eventually the outcome is reliant on the viewer. Turning inwardly one has to look at ones own associations to this imagery and fill in the blanks.

Beyond face value these works suggest a story and a history. Due to their sterility we are drawn to what the image and subject might suggest, and by this association apply meaning. This relies on a universal association and response to signifiers, which in turn allows us to share a common understanding. And for whatever reason we appreciate this timeless moment. A building caught at a moment of disintegration. A teenage girl captured at a moment of impressionability and vulnerability.

* Nancy Spector; Art Photography after Photography; Imperfect Innocence, The Debra and Dennis Scholl collection; Page 10

CLAIRE BREUKEL graduated from the University of Cape Town with a BAFA honors (photography and English) and began working for the South African Center for Photography and the Association for Visual Arts, both non-profit organizations. Breukel went on to curate exhibitions including the 2002 Cape Town Month of Photography biennale, the Vision Photography Festival as well as the Brett Kebble Art Awards in 2003 and 2004. Her introduction to Miami was through the Rubell Family Collection Internship, after which she took the position of Director of Exhibitions at ArtCenter/South Florida. In September 2006 Breukel went on to join Locust Projects, a renowned Miami non-profit alternative space, as their Executive Director.

Many thanks to Debra and Dennis Scholl, Natalia Benedetti, Georges Le Bar and Locust Projects for their support.