Couleurblind

Gregory Crewdson “In a Lonely Place ” exhibition at CO Berlin
Anonymous American suburbs. There are homes strewn with garbage, streets devoid of life, train tracks overgrown with weeds, and fallen-down houses engulfed in flames. The traces of industrialization and civilization appear as ruins. Nature has taken over—but these places are neither idyllic nor romantic. People are shown almost impassively stumbling through menacing landscapes without any sense of orientation. They avoid meeting each other’s gazes, not reacting to this apocalyptic speechlessness. Although no immediate violence can be seen, its presence is palpable everywhere. Emptiness, loneliness, stasis, paranoia—the elaborately staged photographs of Crewdson turn the darker sides of the American dream inside out, enacting a fine line between normality and horror.

Crewdson’s large-format photographs are staged antinarratives. The beginnings and endings of the stories lie outside the narrative frame, leaving events in a permanent state of limbo, forever unresolved. Each clue to the content leads to further questions. Embracing this broadly conceived approach to the art of narrative, Crewdson carries on the tradition of staged photography that emerged as one of the most important forms of contemporary photographic expression since Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall. His work is also strongly influenced by the visual cosmos of the Hollywood film, particularly the themes and imagery of David Lynch and Steven Spielberg. ( via CO Berlin)

2 July to 4 September 2011