Wellbound: Dean Kessmann + Mickey Smith

Oct. 26, 2007 - Jan. 12, 2008
At a time when information is increasingly being viewed in digital format, Mickey Smith and Dean Kessmann have chosen to explore the physicality of the printed word.
Rolling magazines into cylindrical shapes and photographing the colorful patterns formed by the overlapping edges of their pages, Dean Kessmann reduces them to thin streams of color that appear as non representational compositions. The artist conceived the installation as a study in variations among like structures. For this installation, he adopts a horizontal format, which is, for him, both reminiscent of the American landscape and of digital code. Because the magazines he photographs are art magazines, and art is reproduced in these magazines, Kessmann refers to his work as “appropriations of appropriations of reproductions”. Arranging the prints in rows that wrap around the gallery wall, the artist varies the scale of his prints to create the appearance of faster and slower flowing passages of digital data, prompting the reflection of digital technology on printed materials as well as the originality of appropriation in art.
Mickey Smith photographs bound periodicals and professional journals on the shelves of public libraries. The artist seeks to document these reservoirs of information before they disappear in cyberspace. The images are not staged, and she does not manipulate their placement on the shelves. While they are minimalist repetitions of a single form, the titles on the colorful spines prompt us to define our relationship to the meaning of their titles. Smith works in series of diptychs, triptychs and installations that she calls “collocations." Collocation # 4 is a mural scale work comprising fifty images of gray and yellow journals entitled “Today” and “Tomorrow” installed unframed, in a grid format. Viewing Smith’s individual images and installations, we are Lilliputians, looking at giant books--Alice in Wonderland, lost among the stacks.
www.deankessmann.com
www.mickeysmithart.com