The Dark Wilderness of Time
Selections from the Night Cometh

Series by Philip Van Keuren

at SMU's Pollock in the student center
through February 16, 2002

 

Philip Van Keuren Snowstorm Detail from the Night Cometh series
Iris print, diptych, 2000 - 2001, 35 x 47 inches
 

Philip Van Keuren says he looks through the viewfinder a lot. But he only takes about one, 36-shot roll of film a year. And he only makes photographs in New York City. The pictures he takes are of things he first became enamored of in 1975, when he first visited the city.

Which may explain why there's so few new pictures in this show. Many of the images here, were in his recent showing in The MAC's dinky New Work Space, where there simply wasn't enough room to hang the works as the diptychs they're meant to be.

Many of the large diptych images here are of dead birds and other natural history museum denizens and dioramas. The rest are singular architectural features and scenes, almost always in winter and a very few people.

The images are cold. And it's not clear why many are paired, or why other works in the show mix the same images at smaller sizes, further confusing the issue.

Nearly all the works in this strictly black & white photographic exhibition are affecting, almost tender. There's little humor here, but much serious tonality and texture. It's a slow show, meant to be pondered.

 

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