The Spectral Bystander and the Faulted Image

The Internet, with its access to vast amounts of unqualified information, has the ability to lull us into a false sense of knowing. One need not look far for misinformation, whether it involves searching the popular website Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”, reading a few stream-of-conscience blogs, or spending some time watching doctored videos on YouTube — manipulation and deception abound.

Although these sources represent easy targets by democratic design, far more subtle, pervasive, and persuasive in our media culture is the firsthand account. Representing the basis of much journalistic reporting, for centuries reporters have drawn out stories from those individuals closest to action and deed, filtering their testimony to flesh out the most compelling narratives for an isolated audience.

In the 21st century cheap and accessible video equipment, publishing technologies, and venues now give audiences the ability to supplant news agencies altogether, and take their stories and commentary directly to their masses with impunity and without vetting. Ours is an age of communication, perspective, and perception, when we not only have equal access to the same

information, we are fully capable of generating, shaping, and disseminating it ourselves.

The side effect of this leveling of the media-world playing field is an information and communication tidal wave with deep undercurrents of paranoia, mistrust, and anxiety regarding

everything from corporate corruption and government control, to the environment, terrorist propaganda and the neighbors. Although our 24-hour media cycle represents a fountain of information, its potential to give rise to loosened moral restraint and individual responsibility under the cloak of anonymity is enough to overwhelm. Never before have we known so much about so little. Ironically, at the end of the day our ability to expeditiously filter out and forget non-relevant information becomes a critical task of preservation — to hold a space

July 11 – August 22, 2010

Image: Curtis Mann, pointing woman, 2010. Synthetic polymer varnish on bleached chromogenic development print, 30 x 24 inches. Courtesy of the Kavi Gupta Gallery.

Image: Curtis Mann, second sky, 2010. Bleached chromogenic development prints,43.25 x 71.5 inches. Courtesy of the Kavi Gupta Gallery.

for the self within our own lives to nurture and cultivate our own point of view.

The photo-based work of artist Curtis Mann manages to simultaneously define these problems while also carving out just such a space for the self, whether it is as spectral bystander or passionate observer. Taking on the history of photojournalism, documentation, photography, and the Internet as a means of providing evidential proof of the “real”, Mann dissects, dissolves, draws upon, and otherwise alters this media to reveal the architecture behind its belief-building structure.

Mann’s artistic process begins with the downloading and photographic printing of found digital images pulled from Flickr, many of which depict areas of geopolitical conflict such as Beirut, Israel, Palestine, The Gaza Strip, The Balkans, South Africa, and other locations. Posted online, primarily by anonymous, do-it-yourself photographers, these images range from documentary-style evidence of roadblocks, ruined buildings, and refugee camps, to more bucolic, travelogue images of clouds, landscapes, cityscapes, pedestrians, and tourists.

Mann intentionally conflates the reading of these photographs by altering them with applications of varnish and bleach solutions. Serving as a resist, the varnish preserves painterly areas that Mann has strategically masked, while his treatment of solvents disrupt the remaining unprotected areas of the photograph. The resultant images depict dissolved chromatic colors of the print spectrum, in fiery hues of bright red, orange, yellow, and a blinding white, along with warbled and wavering human-like shapes and fragments. The edges of these forms feel vulnerable, as if the surrounding molten surfaces might consume them, while in other images only slivers of flesh and other remnants are left behind.

Presented singularly as well as in large grids, Mann’s manipulated photographic images depict a selective absence — erasures that are not altogether complete yet they force us to suspend our interpretation and definition of what we see. These intellectual disappearances displace meaning, isolating figures within an indefinite space, inverting the figure-ground relationship, and disrupting land and sky into boiling and bubbling spaces free from gravity. Rather than being accepted as empirical data, visual information may now be viewed as unfixed, flexible, fluid, and therefore easily changed to reveal a reflection or a hint of something we may never know. In these images, Mann supplants emotion with an analytical and nuanced process of contemplation and meditation on the significance of context by asking us to question what lies both within and outside a given frame of reference.

By altering the political context of these images, Mann’s chemical visions distort our point of view, allowing us to place ourselves specifically and simultaneously nowhere as well as within the here-and-now of the image we see before us. Withholding judgment, we search for fragments of information not unlike sifting through rubble to reclaim what was once familiar. What emerge are alternate and simultaneous realities — presence, absence, and the truth of our ability to disbelieve. We are reminded that we need not share the same perspective, nor do we assign meaning in the same way. Different people view the same information differently, and the meaning we assign has the potential to change right before our eyes. Curtis Mann reminds us that art, like life, is incomplete unless we bring something of ourselves to the experience. Art becomes the proof of life. — Marcus Cain, Curator

Image: Curtis Mann, removal, two sides, 2010. Synthetic polymer varnish on bleached chromogenic development print, 40 x 100 inches. Courtesy of the Kavi Gupta Gallery.

Image: Curtis Mann, pointing woman, 2010. Synthetic polymer varnish on bleached chromogenic development print, 30 x 24 inches. Courtesy of the Kavi Gupta Gallery.

Established in 1991, the purpose of the Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art (KCJMCA) is to provide innovative art exhibitions and related programming that engage seniors and diverse audiences from all segments of our community to enrich lives and celebrate our common humanity through art. KCJMCA realizes this goal through a cooperative partnership with Village Shalom, an assisted living facility that houses KCJMCA’s Epsten Gallery, and through partnerships with local,regional and national institutions that participate in KCJMCA’s Museum Without Walls exhibition program.

PAST PRESIDENTSSaul Kass (Of Blessed Memory)Michael KleinHugh MerrillLarry Meeker

Sybil & Norman Kahn, Founders

DONATE | CONTRIBUTE | JOINKCJMCA is a non-for-profit 501(c)3 and a member of the national Council of American Jewish Museums.

Contributions to KCJMCA are tax deductible and donations may be sent to 5500 West 123rd Street, Overland Park, KS 66209.

KCJMCA membership, volunteering and sponsorship opportunities are always available.

Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary ArtEpsten Gallery | Museum Without Walls

5500 West 123rd Street, Overland Park, KS 66209 Ph: 913.266.8413 | Fx: 913.345.2611

www.kcjmca.org

Acknowledgements: The Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art (KCJMCA) would like to thank exhibiting artist Curtis Mann and the Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago, IL, for making this exhibition possible. We would also like to thank Linda Lighton and the Lighton Foundation and Michael Klein for making this catalogue brochure possible. Additionally, this program is presented in part by the Kansas Arts Commission, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, which believes that a great nation deserves great art. KCJMCA also wishes to thank our UrbanSuburban Patrons and Artists, members of the Friends of KCJMCA, Village Shalom staff, residents and their families, and our volunteers.

Front Cover Image: standing woman, facing east, 2010, Synthetic polymer varnish on bleached chromogenic development print, 30 x 24 inches. Courtesy of the Kavi Gupta Gallery.

BOARD OF DIRECTORSRegina Kort, PresidentSylvia Augustus, Vice PresidentLynn Intrater, Vice PresidentLynn Schweig, SecretaryPeter Beren, TreasurerHerb AdlerDick AndersonStuart BittermanSherry Cromwell-LacyAnne GillJacqueline Epsten, HonoraryPeggy KrigelLinda LightonSharon LundJules MoskowitzBarbara SmithPaul SokoloffIrma StarrEllen TaylorSherman TitensJoni WeinerShirley White

STAFFEileen Garry, Executive DirectorMarcus Cain, CuratorAbby Rufkahr, Administrative Assistant

July 11 – August 22, 2010