I
should confess that I have long been one of Adam Fuss’s biggest fans. So I came
to this show with high expectations. I was not disappointed.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Scott Laird, the gallery director,
and Deborah Ronnen, a prominent local art dealer, have taken a side room at the
Visual Studies Workshop and transformed it into a little temple of Fuss. It
offers a partial survey of the artist’s output over the last 10 years or so.
Partial because some of my favorite Fuss images — his water ripples, rabbits
with their guts entwined, babies splashing in water — are absent. But
considering that these pictures are drawn only from Rochester collections,
including that of George Eastman House and of Deborah Ronnen herself, they
nevertheless form an impressive array. For the full monty you must travel to
the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where 55 of Fuss’s works have been gathered
for his first major American retrospective.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Fuss is the contemporary master of the photogram — images produced by
positioning objects directly onto a piece of photographic paper and then
exposing the whole to light. It has also been known as photogenic drawing,
rayography, or more recently as cameraless photography. The technique dates
back to the very beginnings of photography, when in the 1830s Fox Talbot laid
leaves and pieces of lace onto sensitized paper before exposing them to
sunlight and recording the shadows they cast. Subsequent artists — Christian
Schad, Man Ray, and Moholy-Nagy — resuscitated the process with their own
innovations. But the form was largely neglected until Fuss arrived in the late
’80s with his own large-scale and often brightly colored revelations.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย From 1993, Untitled (Nasturtium) is one of the earliest pieces in the show. An
entire nasturtium, roots and all, was placed onto a 40-by-30-inch piece of
Cibachrome paper. Then Fuss flashed it with just the right amount of light to
penetrate the fibers and etch the plant’s colors into the photographic
emulsion. The result is a devastatingly gorgeous mass of green leaves
punctuated by small dabs of red and orange flowers, whilst the pink roots
dangle palely below.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย From the same year is Untitled (Spiral). This too, with its
neon circles of orange, almost hums with vitality. But its source was quite
artificial: A small flashlight was suspended from a ceiling and allowed to
swing in ever decreasing circles towards the center of another large sheet of
Cibachrome. Fuss waited until the flashlight came to a complete stop below its
pivot, so the middle of the image, exposed for longer, is a blazing white hole
of light. Fuss has made a series of these spirals in different colors by fixing
variously hued gels over the bulb of the flashlight. They have been widely
exhibited to great critical acclaim.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย A strong subtext of spirituality
runs throughout Fuss’s work — he’s interested particularly in the Sufi
religion — and the spirals have often been read as tunnels leading to a
bright light or, as one reviewer put it, “deep vortices of the soul.” This may
be a genuine intention, and I can certainly recognize a vaguely astral sense of
eternity in the geometry of the piece, but ultimately I find myself mesmerized
on a purely aesthetic level. As Fuss once said, “It’s only when I make a
picture that I have to keep looking at that I feel I’ve succeeded… Like the
sensation of looking into the face of someone very beautiful.”
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย In what is perhaps the best picture
of the show, Untitled (Snake), the
creature wriggles through a shallow pool of water. It’s possible to read it as
sperm signifying birth or the serpent in the Garden of Eden — not altogether
inappropriate for an artist named Adam. But what really enthralls me is the
sheer deliciousness of the shades of blue, the exquisite detail of the ripples.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Themes of mortality crop up
repeatedly in Fuss’s work. His latest pieces — represented here by photograms
of lacy christening gowns, a large butterfly, and billowing trails of smoke —
are contained by the collective title of My
Ghost. Yes, yes, the butterfly is a classic symbol for the brevity of life
and the somewhat macabre Victorian christening gowns speak of mourning and the
afterlife. But it’s Fuss’s least concept-laden images of smoke that are most
successful. They are evanescent and funereal but first and foremost they are,
like the show as a whole, beautiful.
Adam
Fuss: Selected Works continues through October 21 at Visual Studies Workshop, 31
Prince Street. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. Admission: $2,
$1 for students. 442-8676.
This article appears in Oct 9-15, 2002.
