Matthew Albanese: Strange Worlds
“Tornado” made from steel wool, cotton, ground parsley and moss.
The exhibition that opened earlier this week at Winkleman Gallery in NY, a group show of young American photographers, could very well have passed you by as much of the work looks very young indeed. One photographer hasn’t yet outgrown his David Hockney polaroid phase while another is inexplicably stuck making Rorscharch tests. The one standout is Matthew Albanese (previously mentioned by Matthew Rodriguez), whose staged, model-based photographs arrest and confuse the viewer for that one extra moment it takes to really get hooked by an image. (To clarify, model-based meaning a physical model of an environment not a human model.)
Working in the style of photographer Lori Nix, Albanese painstakingly creates a world in miniature, not unlike a model train set, complete with tiny trees, tiny rocks, plastic water. The process of setting the stage for his photographs is almost as interesting as the finished product itself. Like Nix, Albanese’s work focuses on natural environments, but unlike her photographs, which center mostly on manmade environments and often include human figures, Albanese’s interest seems to be fixed in a world untouched by humanity whether in outer space or on Earth. In fact, the only sign of human intervention is an American flag in a lunar landscape. While all of his photographs mimic real, natural environments (with the exception of one photo that takes place inside a burning house), half show a world at rest and the other half a world torn apart by volcanoes, tornadoes, icebergs, wind storms and fires. Though his ‘still-life’ work is lovely, it’s his natural disasters I like best. His tornado and volcano photos, part of his “Strange Worlds” series, are one view at Winkleman Gallery until June 12.
