KENNEDY MUSEUM OF ART - Ohio University

EXHIBITIONS
Phantoms, Shadows and Phenomena
Kennedy Museum of Art is proud
to present Phantoms, Shadows and
Phenomena, an exhibition which will be
on view during the winter and spring
quarters. Working with artists such as
Mat Collishaw, Laura Larson, Hirsch
Perlman, Adam Putnam, Dana Sherwood,
and Victor Vazquez, the exhibition uses
video and photography to examine the
notion of the seen and unseen, where
reality is blurred with illusion and fantasy.
British artist Mat Collishaw invites
the viewer into a fantasyland with his
“Fairy Story” works, which capture
the spirit of dreaming through stunning
and seductive visual imagery. His work
incorporates images of the Cottingley
fairy photographs, which were staged
photographs of three young sisters that
were originally thought to be real records
of elves and fairies. Collishaw presents
these images with the glow of ultraviolet
light, suspending this fairy tale land
between truth and fiction. By maintaining
a world of enchantment and reverie,
Collishaw explores the relationship
between representation and reality.
The exhibition will also feature the
work of photographer Laura Larson.
Her work titled “Asylum” is a series of
images that were taken in the cells and
hallways that were once the women’s
dormitories of the former Athens Lunatic
Asylum in Athens, Ohio. Concerned with
the notions of the real and reproduced
that have defined photography, Larson’s
work challenges what she calls “the
desire to trust our eyes.” The ghostly
apparitions captured in her work give
shape to the haunting stories surrounding
the Asylum and force the viewer to
consider, at least for a moment, the
reality of the imagined and contemplate
the fragile notions of our memories
and the past. She says, “these pictures
imagine what the medium was like for
nineteenth century audiences – how
magic and truth become indistinguishable
in the photograph.”
Delving deeper into the unknown
is the work by Hirsch Perlman, which
consists of photographs and videos that
depict unfamiliar landscapes, mysterious
situations and peculiar characters, and
inexplicable phenomena. His work “Nine
Lives” includes black-and-white prints
of striped cats that were taken with a
slow exposure and blown up to images
of large proportion. By capturing the
movement of these felines, Perlman
offers a beautiful and disturbing series
of blurred images that alter the viewer’s
perception of reality.
Phantoms, Shadows and
Phenomena presents a world of reality
that is questioned, performed and at
times embellished. Using video and
photography, the artists explore the
occult landscape where real becomes
fictional, the known befalls the unknown.
Such images of illusion bring up
suspicion; yet tempt the fickle mind to
believe, to see the unseen and to bring
back the nostalgia for illusion and magic.
Large Orb, Laura Larson, lambda print, 40” x 50”, 2005
Fairy Story 1, Mat Collishaw, lambda digital print, 15 1/2” x 17 1/4”,
2003. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York.