Former Show:Bob Carey Photographs

Bokeh Gallery, here in the monOrchid building is very proud to present:

Bob Carey: Photographs

Exhibit: February 19 through April 15

Reception for the Artist:  February 19, 2010  6-9 p.m.

Bokeh is proud to present the work of Bob Carey

the artist:

Bob Carey, photographs… the self, raw, introspective, playful, humorous, and always thought provoking. A self that happens to be his own. Carrying on the tradition of  work exploring the multivalent definitions of gender and identity, Bob Carey is a photographer based in New York City.  Who,  like the forerunners whose names include Marcel Duchamp’s alter ego Rrose Selavy, as photographed by Man Ray, and onward into the present as with Cindy Shermans notable  photographic works of self portraiture,  Bob Carey, like-wise turns the camera upon himself and in the doing makes Art.

Capitol A, period, full stop…

Refined by the fires of introspection and gilded by authenticity, Bob Carey produces images showcased in galleries and collected privately on the merits his originality and his keen sense of depicting the ambient tensions existing amidst modernity’s solipsism, and the graphic contents afforded  by either the urban or pastoral landscapes that he portrays himself in. Where, much like the work of the predecessors mentioned, Bob Carey’s images beckons our eyes into the frame, until there we chance upon a familiar space, hushed , hidden yet common to all: to have our lives witnessed, to be seen by the other,and recognized as value, if not for that waking sentience of being itself, restless, bare, exposed and standing there to behold as answer.

For here residing in this becoming, is the flash point of Carey’s aesthetic. The space where Bob Carey’s work separates itself from the horizon of  those talents who went before, perhaps even as far back as the liquid gaze of Narcissus  himself , innumerably imaged by the painters of antiquity.  Times passes , as does  landscape, as well as the technology in the making of an image; and yes while true in differing mediums, each is staged in the still beat of narrative, Carey’s work contains no symmetry nor echo of the beloved , such terms elude us, for his images are aware and almost promethean-like in craft, an endeavor kindled as an offering to illuminate the landscape of his own darkness, all of which  could be summed up in echoes of his own footfalls to set position before the shutter is tripped , if there must be a referent, of a single intelligible word, imaged in silence and etched within frame. the word: Vulnerability.  Where almost child- like in its witness each image is a gesture of tension, both arising and now still. A photograph of remember, that requests looking along rather than merely just at, all made by one who says, yes look here, yes witness me,  for yes i am fearfully and wonderfully made. And indeed there within each yes, and through such imagery, each a choice as it is an affirmation by the attention of composition, we  in turn  see ourselves and  because of this are better for it.

Cherished then and framed just so, an image of light, a man in a pink tutu, irreverent, there in landscape.An object of beauty: the picture. The content; He. God-made, singular, hairy, made of bone, blood, sweat and tears, both body and spirit, utterly unique, never to come again neither in personality nor in likeness, indeed His yes, complete, named Bob followed by Carey.  One who, so named and entire, imaged irreverent, is a maker and continues on. For Bob Carey’s work and attendant craft affirms and is needed reminder, a  testimony to the art ‘of making art’  for the sake of  growth as both memoir and as fiction. In works articulated by gesture or  there in pose, his work abides as witness “written in light’, as photograph, as it is written on the heart- all before bounding away into  leap.

For thats where  it is hidden, and therein lies the appeal,  the recognition which one sees in his memorable work, this hope, this beauty that cascades into the eye. We as image makers know this, and once grasped hold it close, making  the picture perfect, free of gravity and bearing it  up toward the answer that lurks beyond glance near the edges of things  and how this, once glimpsed draws us on,  past our own notions of nonconformity, normalcy and outward,  into a far closer world that is more than just random or sound and fury  but gained, true, wild and ever rising.

- especially for those who have found the courage to wear the pink tutu as he.

Bob Carey photographs.

all images ©2010 Bob Carey