I've been intrigued by Crewdson since whenever it was that I first came across his work (extemporanea tells me that it was pre-2007, at any rate), and this exhibition, gathering selections from three of his series, was satisfying.
The most striking - and well-known - images were from 'Beneath the Roses' (2003-2008), large scale and full colour, carefully staged and lit vistas of alienation and loneliness from the American unconscious (I think most, if not all, were shot in small town New England, but the location is as much one of collective imagining and association as of specific geography). Some appear to be part of a narrative, while others appear more as single moments in time, but all share a certain frozen quality - an unnatural stillness. The subjects are people, buildings, human-made structures, natural surrounds, but always with an air of the oblique and the unknowable - unmet gazes, unexplained actions, inexplicable configurations (the one of people walking along a long train track, a house on fire in the background, is only the most obvious), submerged histories, impulses and thoughts.
The ones from 'Sanctuary' (2010) have the same air of being like still shots from a dream - abandoned, haunted - though their setting is different, being taken at and around the closed Cinecitta studios in Rome, and being all in black and white. The reference point here is more de Chirico than Hopper, more melancholy than subtly troubling and disturbing, but the mood is ineffably similar.
And, lastly, those from 'Fireflies' (1996) - befitting their subject, they're tiny, all showing little flecks of light against dark, wooded backdrops; it's easy to see why Crewdson was drawn to them given his artistic preoccupations with light and shadow, and captured moments in time.
The most striking - and well-known - images were from 'Beneath the Roses' (2003-2008), large scale and full colour, carefully staged and lit vistas of alienation and loneliness from the American unconscious (I think most, if not all, were shot in small town New England, but the location is as much one of collective imagining and association as of specific geography). Some appear to be part of a narrative, while others appear more as single moments in time, but all share a certain frozen quality - an unnatural stillness. The subjects are people, buildings, human-made structures, natural surrounds, but always with an air of the oblique and the unknowable - unmet gazes, unexplained actions, inexplicable configurations (the one of people walking along a long train track, a house on fire in the background, is only the most obvious), submerged histories, impulses and thoughts.
The ones from 'Sanctuary' (2010) have the same air of being like still shots from a dream - abandoned, haunted - though their setting is different, being taken at and around the closed Cinecitta studios in Rome, and being all in black and white. The reference point here is more de Chirico than Hopper, more melancholy than subtly troubling and disturbing, but the mood is ineffably similar.
And, lastly, those from 'Fireflies' (1996) - befitting their subject, they're tiny, all showing little flecks of light against dark, wooded backdrops; it's easy to see why Crewdson was drawn to them given his artistic preoccupations with light and shadow, and captured moments in time.
