TV#11 (Amsterdam) is one of nine television C prints by Joy Episalla on display at the Carrie Secrist Gallery.
via Chicago Tribune, On The Town:
Atmospheric reflections captured in portraits of hotel television sets
By Alan Artner
Mar 21, 2008Joy Episalla's most engrossing series of photographs are the "portraits" she made by shooting subjects' bookshelves. But close behind are comparatively vacant images of hotel rooms in different cities she has visited. The spaces all are reflected in blank screens of the rooms' television sets, so in a sense, from the book pieces to these, Episalla has moved from T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" to Newton Minow's "vast wasteland" with little diminution of interest.
Nine of the television C Prints are on view at the Carrie Secrist Gallery. They are, I suppose, minimal portraits of the artist, who presumably has perceived something of herself in each room through a glass darkly. But aside from the disarray of bedclothes, viewers will have difficulty in determining just what aspects of personality Episalla has seen.
I like the pictures more as atmospheric studies with distortions imposed by the position of the TVs and convexity of their picture tubes. These, plus hard or soft, cold or warm light, suggest some existential adventure pursued alone in strange places, and it makes for a low-temperature sort of romance oddly suited to our times.
via Flavorpill Chicago: ART
Medium Cool: Joy Episalla & Michael Antkowiak
Medium Cool features photographs by Joy Episalla and paintings by Michael Antkowiak. Episalla depicts the quiet, transitional spaces of hotel rooms, as reflected in the blank screens of powered-down television sets. The unmade beds and coffee cups on nightstands speak to the intimate, temporary moments left behind. Antkowiak also explores private spaces of unspoken potential. His paintings find a solitary young woman in her bedroom, frozen in various simple activities. The muted reds and blues give a feeling of calm without eliminating the possibility that something interesting might happen within the voyeuristic frame. [Info Source]
– Ellen Hartwell Alderman
