12/2/2004
Jan Dunning
31Grand, New York
Eerie. For her first solo exhibition in New York, Dunning directs disturbing pieces of theatre, conceived either in her imagination or inspired by existing narratives and played out in one exposure for the camera. The resulting work, the series Metamorphoses, depicts epic transformations, many of which are reinterpretations of Ovid's mythical tales. The photographs strive to unsettle by proffering evidence of events unseen, unfathomable or implausible.
31Grand is proud to present Eerie, photographs by Jan Dunning.
In the mid-nineteenth century writings of Lewis Carroll, the creator of
Alice's Wonderland, he refers often to his theory of a human being's three
psychic states, in which he is most fascinated by the idea of an "eerie
state" of consciousness. Carroll defined this as an in between place,
located after "ordinary" awareness, which is conscious only of reality, and
coming before the "trance" or sleeping state, in which we dream. To be in
the eerie state is to have simultaneously a logical sense of one's
surroundings and a heightened awareness of the supernatural.
Jan Dunning works with pinhole photography for the similar way in which it
combines the apparently opposing realms of the magical and the realistic,
bridging the material and the immaterial worlds. By harnessing photography's
paradoxical nature she can, as Marina Warner puts it, "seize evidence" of
the fantastic, to present a magical and metaphysical take on the modern
world. Subverting our expectation of photography as an objective genre,
documenting without interpreting, her work recalls the days of the medium's
invention and its original connotations of alchemy, witchcraft and
superstition. Long exposures, infinite depth of field, the idiosyncrasies of
home made cameras; these characteristics allow intuition and accident to
assert their influence, and for ideas of the invisible, the unknowable, the
fantastic and the unique to take precedence.
For her first solo exhibition in New York, Dunning directs disturbing pieces
of theatre, conceived either in her imagination or inspired by existing
narratives and played out in one exposure for the camera. The resulting
work, the series Metamorphoses, depicts epic transformations, many of which
are reinterpretations of Ovid's mythical tales. The photographs strive to
unsettle by proffering evidence of events unseen, unfathomable or
implausible. By re-enacting Leda's encounter or Helen of Troy's hatching, by
turning women into birds or growing eight legs as a contemporary Arachne,
the pinhole camera allows the artist or her models to mutate, reinventing
themselves as impossible hybrids, clones and monsters. At times grotesque
and malevolent, at others regenerative and productive, the physical
according to the artist is indefinable, untrustworthy even. Images reveal
and yet conceal, the familiar world is made strange and a higher value is
placed on emotional experience and imaginative escape. Within her themes of
multiple identities and the evolving self, Dunning suggests that the eerie
pinhole perspective is the ideal mediator of modern insecurities.
Attached image: Arachne (from Metamorphese), color pinhole photograph, 2003
Directions: Subway -L Train to Bedford Ave. Walk south on Bedford Ave. to
Grand St. Right on Grand St. to Kent Ave. Car -Drive over the Williamsburg
Bridge. First exit. Right on Broadway. Right on Kent Ave. to Grand St.
February 14 Â March 14, 2004
Hours: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday 1-7pm, or by appointment
Opening Reception Friday, Feb. 13, 7-10pm
For more information about the artist please contact us at 718.388.2858
31GRAND
Thirty One Grand Street
Williamsburg Brooklyn, New York 11211
718-388-2858