Columbus Dispatch

By Christopher Yates

In its 12th year, Image Ohio continues to fulfill a mission highlighting the achievements of Ohio photographers and time-based media artists.

The juried exhibition includes work selected by a different juror every year — this year, Chris Stults, assistant film/video curator at the Wexner Center for the Arts.

Such a selection process can be arduous and is dependent, of course, on the number and quality of works submitted. Rather than adhering to an overarching theme, Stults aimed to select a representative sampling.

Nevertheless, a conceptual thread emerged.

While making use of different techniques, processes and subjects, many of the works address issues of absence and loss. Throughout the exhibit, viewers encounter partial stories and scenes of ruin or disintegration.

Photographer Ardine Nelson documents spaces in decline. She examines subtle and dramatic geometries in her evocative abstract compositions. In Franklinton-2063, woodwork graphically frames the smashed plaster walls of an older home. Although debris litters the floor, the room’s bright blue walls suggest happier times. An observation rather than a call to arms, the piece directs attention to the housing crisis.

Jacqueline McGilvray’s Room Without a Man features a darkened room with a small curtained window. Soft morning light filters through the window. The implied open narrative concerns action and inaction, presence and absence, and the inner and outer.

Francis Schanberger’s experiments with anthotype photographs are compelling. Using natural plant pigments that fade when exposed to light, he positions bedtime garments on sensitized paper and exposes them to direct sunlight. The resulting photograms are haunting.

Crystal Tursich raises issues of homelessness and survival in Mobile Pantry. The image depicts a shopping cart filled with belongings and parked in a wooded camp.

In Chanika Svetvilas’ video Joshua T. Edwards, dreamlike experiences flash by as if they were out-of-body experiences. In one scene, a man, lying on the ground, is being arrested while officers callously step on his legs.

Leah Fisher documents small communities in decline. In Old Bakery, Glouster, Ohio, she captures a weathered two-story structure, its function visibly fading from memory.

Other successful works include Amy Leibrand’s surreal The Heart Is the Smallest Place of All, Rachel Girard-Reisert’s triptych Tropism #1, and Jenny Fine’s comical When We Were Synchronized Swimmers.

Though thin in terms of the quantity of work, the challenging exhibit offers strong pieces that represent diverse techniques.

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“The internet has replaced a certain actual physical communication and interface between people,” said the West Virginia-based art professor who will be showing at Roy G Biv gallery this month. “As a society, we’re kind of seeking answers or connections via the internet and social media.”

This idea inspired his 2010 series “Searching.” He searched Google Images for quoted phrases that are part of our lexicon — “tree hugger,” “nature at its best” — and paired together the most intriguing, copyright-free photo results. He compiled the results into 8-by-10-inch books.

“It was so fascinating once I got into it,” Sherwin said. “It’s amazing how wildly different our interpretations are.”

To one user in the abyss of cyberspace, for example, “heaven on earth” meant a mouthwatering cheeseburger. To another it meant a half-dressed woman lounging on a car.

“The whole thing was very revealing,” Sherwin said. “What surprises me more than anything is how the internet has become this expression of who we are as a society, a representation of what we think heaven on earth or nature at its best are. The underlying sort of theme here is searching for images that have some sort of purpose and bouncing those questions off society on the internet. Who knew something as simple as a Google image search could be so telling?”

The photographer has employed the internet in other works as well — in one series he took images of the sky and then superimposed people’s Facebook status updates over the photos — but the greatest theme in his art is something else.

“Interconnectivity is the undercurrent to my work,” Sherwin said. “It’s always been there, these micro and macro connections. I’m fascinated by the everyday and how we can find the cosmic in our own backyard.”

“Constellations” best illustrates this point. The series features Sherwin’s photographs of small rocks lit to look like images of planets in space.

Showing alongside Sherwin in this exhibition is Hans Gindlesberger. His performative photographs are part of a series titled “I’m in the Wrong Film” and use the colloquialism as a metaphor for life when it starts to feel unauthentic.

Gindlesberger and Sherwin have worked out which of their individual pieces would best complement each other; however, that fact has some poetic significance. The two artists have not met yet. Their communications have been through — where else — the internet.

by Jakie Mantey of ColumbusAlive

Other Klimek photos mimic the jagged panoramas of NASA photos, or show what appear to be the barren terrains of distant planets. This series is called Analogs, referring to the simulation of conditions on other planets. These illusions allow the mind to wander between locations, between the miniscule and the massive, the mundane and the exotic. It allows us to look inward and simultaneously outward.

Also concerned with re-examination of space, Rojorshi Ghosh’s work features video projections and light box photographs. Much of Ghosh’s work transports the viewer to the local realities of India’s recent history, but it’s simultaneous specificity and abstraction of image make for an unsettling experience. One projection is a view of an old elevator going up and down, forming shifting black and white patterns as it goes. But this elevator doesn’t exist, because the projection is pieced together video. Thus, to experience this video is to be many places at once.

In the other projection, the black silhouettes of birds wheel over Delhi to a soundtrack of horns, sirens, song, and voices that wanders between music and cacophony. The birds (kites) are considered to be djinn, or spirits, from the city’s past.

Layering of abstraction and representation of location can also be seen in Ghosh’s light boxes. One shows an image of a propaganda poster, torn in half to disfigure the face on it. The images work to situate viewers in recent politics while the abstraction works to distance them.

Shifting location and a multilayered present can be seen in both halves of the show, as the artists re-imagine familiar landscapes as sites for fantasy and play.

By Chris Greathouse

2012 Exhibition Season Schedule

January 7 – 28, 2012

Hans Gindlesberger and Michael Sherwin

February 4 – 25, 2012

Millee Tibbs, Lauren Kalman, and George Gregory

March 3 – 31, 2012

Christopher Greathouse and Angie Zielinski

April 7 – 28, 2012

Dan Solberg and Jacob Tonski

May 5 – 26, 2012

Marty Weishaar and Cayla Skillin-Brauchle

June 2 – 30, 2012

Lali Khalid and Monika Laskowska

July 7 – 28, 2012

Community Outreach Exhibit: TBA

August 4 – 25, 2012

Xiaoshi Qin and Lauri Lynnxe-Murphy

September 1 – 29, 2012

Elena Harvey-Collins, Philip Spangler, and Nate Mathews

October 6 – 27, 2012

Jennifer Anable and Jeremy Stone

November 3 – 24, 2012

Courtney Kessel and Linda Diec

December 1 – 29, 2012

Small Works

By Betsy Schneider

“Ray Klimek and Rajorshi Ghosh take what most of us would consider trash or a ruined landscape and turn it into art. The two Ohio University assistant professors have both documented man’s effect on the areas where they grew up.

“We realized there’s a common theme of waste in both of our work,” Klimek explained. Their joint exhibition this month at ROY G BIV, “Residues,” just goes to show that nothing is wasted on a good artist.

Klimek was raised in northeastern Pennsylvania, near abandoned coal mines where he would often play. The setting has inspired Klimek to create a photo series, “Carbon/Analog,” which captures the sense of fantasy and adventure he felt there as a kid.

“What’s so fascinating is partly that it lends itself to whatever we want it to be,” Klimek said of the black mound-covered landscape. “It’s a place where you can play army, you can play cowboys and Indians, you can play anything that your imagination can come up with.”

He often stylizes the photos to resemble official NASA images or pictures of the nighttime sky.

“From a distance, it looks kind of astronomical and then you get closer up and you realize that it’s spoils sometimes,” he said of the glittering coal residue.

Ghosh, whose “Ganges” series last year at OSU’s Urban Arts Space showed video footage of items floating in the Indian river, has contributed a series of what he calls “reconfigured” communist propaganda posters found on the streets of Calcutta, his hometown. There is also a lightbox installation modeled after a broken lightbox found in Cairo’s Tahrir Square that bore an image of Egypt’s former president, Hosni Mubarak.

The centerpiece of Ghosh’s work, though, will be “Landscape with Kites,” a video installation that shows thousands of kites — birds of prey — flying over Delhi. Locals believe spirits from the city’s violent past reside on the wings of the birds.”

To see the rest of the article visit Columbus Alive at http://www.columbusalive.com/content/stories/2011/11/03/preview-november-gallery-hop.html

http://outlookcolumbus.com/2011/09/find-fraud-september-2011/

Every dollar you give makes a significant contribution to the gallery.  Help us stay independent with donations!

More information regarding this special event see below or the posted links.

The Big Give will give our nonprofit community an economic boost, helping a wide range of organizations that positively impact our culture and community, including the arts, education, health, human services, conservation, and animal welfare. There is an unprecedented demand for nonprofit programs and services—our diligent nonprofits deserve our support.

On November 10, from 11:00 a.m. to November 11, 11:00 a.m., the Foundation will match credit card gifts of $20 or more made to a central Ohio nonprofits that are a part of The Columbus Foundation’s PowerPhilanthropy. Columbus Foundation donors can also make a minimum grant of $250 through their Donor Advised Fund.

All donations received during The Big Give will be matched through a pro-rated portion of the final match pool—giving everyone who participates the opportunity to have a percentage of their donation(s) matched.

Please mark your calendars for this extraordinary 24 hours. Together, we can increase support for local nonprofits during their most challenging time of the year!

Exhibition Dates: 12/03 – 12/17

Drop off: 11/26-11/27

Opening reception: 12/3

Pick up: 12/17-12/18

35% commission on all sold works.

Prospectus is found at the link below:

SmallWorks2011

Looking for acrylic painting instructor

Application Due: October 31, 2011

Date: November 9, 2011 and December 7, 2011 6-9pm

Paid: $25 per hour

We are having a monthly member only opportunity for artists who paint to teach a three hour class.  The event will be held at Roy G Biv emerging artist non-profit gallery (997 N. High St).  We need 3-5 painters that will be teaching 15 adults how to recreate a painting the artist has already created.  The artist will be teaching one at a time and will rotate each month amongst the selected artists.

The event is sponsored by Colors and Bottles.  Colors and Bottles is an art class event planning organization.  They started their business in Chicago and are working to expand throughout the nation.

The first two dates for this event are November 9^th and December 7^th both from 6-9pm.  This will be a reoccurring event the second Wednesday of every month.  Artists will be paid 25 dollars per hour and supplies will be included.

If you are interested in applying for this event please send three images and your biography to Emily@roygbivgallery.org.

For more information on this event please visit www.colorsandbottles.com