Thomas Kellner: In America
Ken Fandell: From Up and Down, and Still Somehow
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The eye-catching color prints created by Kellner, Fogelson, and Fandell are more scenic than conceptual: the term “deconstruction” is too often used to describe the techniques of any artist who challenges perception by disassembling and reassembling imagery. But when there’s no ideological agenda to expose unnoticed forces working behind appearances, such art falls more under the rubric of decor. Whether the seams are in the foreground or hidden on a hard drive, the images here are ones you’d rather live with than think about.
Kellner’s twist–which he risks turning into a gimmick through repetition–is to tilt the frames, a cubist effect he says was inspired by Robert Delaunay’s 1911 painting of the Eiffel Tower: Kellner angles his lens about 45 degrees to one side for one frame and 45 degrees to the other for the next. He then alternates the direction of the tilt row by row. The result is a wrinkled rhythm that gives buildings a beveled look, as if an earthquake had just struck and they were about to collapse into rubble. Kellner’s Chicago, Marina Towers, 2003, assembled from 24 strips of film 13 frames long, looks like a nod to Brancusi’s Endless Column. Here the scalloped balconies of Bertrand Goldberg’s Chicago building enrich Kellner’s design. Less successful is New York, Guggenheim, 2003: the undulating organic shape of Frank Lloyd Wright’s design doesn’t lend itself to Kellner’s cubist formula. Also lacking in interest are some of his other Chicago shots: the Navy Pier Ferris wheel, Water Tower, the Drake Hotel. Kellner’s strongest image, New York, Brooklyn Bridge, 2003, is taken from a familiar angle: looking down the length of this landmark structure. Because there are so many cables crisscrossing the vista and foreground, many of them end up out of focus, which gives the image a vibratory texture: here the bridge not only shakes but shimmers.
