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A Year In Photography

Can you imagine taking note of each hour you lived for a year? Christine Gatti’s exhibit “:18” makes you wish you were just a little bit more aware of what you did with your time. Gatti took one photograph of her face and a second of her surroundings on the 18th minute of every hour, every day for 12 months, July 2004–2005. The images that Gatti captured are the featured member solo exhibit for the CEPA Gallery’s Annual Members’ Show.

Photography, video and other related works by CEPA’s members from around Western New York and further abroad are on display in the second-floor gallery. Esteemed gallerist Nina Freudenheim judged this show. Rounding out the exhibits this month, “Underground Video” presents the work of five emerging video artists in the Underground Gallery and Window on Main Street.

Gatti has created a grid for each month—24 images down for every hour, with two images for each hour, stretched across 28, 30 or 31 days, depending on the month. Gatti began this project as an effort to remember her life. The resulting experience was more substantial than she expected, resulting in a yearlong meditation of sorts. Once finished with the yearlong goal, Gatti kept going for an additional six months.

Across from the picture grids, the Flux Gallery contains three monitors displaying the images in a streaming video format. Each image is up for less than a second and shows Gatti’s surroundings alternating with her face, creating a rhythm that forms a kind of wave pattern with a recurring sleep theme. The bed shots stand out—for a good portion of the year, Gatti’s bed linens and duvet cover are orange—filling the screen with warmth. As with the linens, color bounces out of the screen when the artist captures images of a pair of orange shoes, a red mug, a white dog or white snow. The recurring themes of feet, food, dogs and cats seem to reflect her mood hourly.

Gatti lives in New York City, yet the city plays a surprisingly small role in the year in pictures she presents at CEPA.

Christine Gatti's ":18" is the featured solo exhibit at CEPA's Members Show
The images move from day to night and cover a range of activities. The artist travels to a sunny place for vacation, does yoga and cuddles with her girlfriend. Out-of-town visits become apparent when the bed configuration changes; the image of the artist’s face morphs as her hair gets longer and lighter.

There is a surprisingly formal visual composition that results from the mapping of her days, a magic that transforms this work into emblems for subconscious intention. The orange of Christine Gatti’s bed sheets becomes a major theme in the static grid images. As Gatti tends to sleep for six to nine hours a night, the images beginning each vertical set are more often than not of the artist sleeping next to her girlfriend. So the stripe of orange or white bed linens usually fills the camera’s lens in both images—becoming color blocks that create a visual continuity across the 12 printed images, filling the gallery wall. These blocks of color show how constant is our need for sleep and how major a part of our life it is.

Gatti is a freelance photographer, so her collection of hourly images looks quite different from how a nine-to-five worker’s might. There are a good number of images around the house or with family. Occasionally Gatti steps into the bathroom to catch her image in the mirror. More frequently you’ll see a computer monitor or an image of the photography studio where the artist works as an assistant to photographer Patrick Demarchelier. During the year it looks like Gatti took some vacations; she is seen on a beach, on a cruise ship or in a snowy place. Or maybe she was scouting locations for photography shoots. The rhythms of life take over in this work, giving power to routine—and suggesting that viewers make those routines as meaningful and pleasant as they can. The seemingly meaningless gesture of allowing your cat to wake you every morning, like clockwork, becomes a constant that is a delight to realize.

The Members

Hans Gindlesberger won a solo exhibition award for his work, “I’m in the Wrong Film,” as did Tricia Zigmund. Zigmund is showing two moody C-prints with a dark, bluish light titled “In the Context of You” and “Exudation Position.” The figure is paramount in these melancholic yet romantic images. Gindlesberger’s digital ink-jet images hand-frame the artist in comical vignettes, documenting those frustrating moments that might send you back to bed to sulk on the right day.

Nina Freudenheim also gave juror’s awards to several artists, including Sylvie Belanger for her “Le Double #5,” layered images that utilize silkscreen and black-and-white photography. Andrei Hand’s “Night Light 3 &5” also won a juror’s award and Wayne Geist won “Best of Show” for his work “July 4, 2004,” which pairs fireworks over a dark cemetery, a powerful image that contradicts our usual sense of the holiday.

Tricia Zigmund was awarded a solo exhibition award. This piece is titled "Exudation Position".
Members of CEPA provide an outstanding survey of the world in photography and new media in this show, spanning subject matter and process, ranging from silver gelatin to photocopy transfers. The show is a testament to the strength of the gallery’s presence in the world of photography.

The Underground

The title “Underground Video” is a bit ironic since all of the five artists are or have been students at SUNY at Buffalo. It’s not like these five women are making art on the sly. Nonetheless, the collection of video works is engaging and occasionally challenging, as the show’s might suggest. Robin Brasington’s “Everyday” ties lovely memoir imagery to the notion of abuse. Elizabeth Knipe digests the city in “Buffalo Walk,” observing the land and detritus through 11 hours of walking. Julie Perini elevates the incidental in “Let’s watch this guy at a coffee shop.” “Counter Clockwise” by Arzu Ozkal Telhan makes a dance of the decaying waterfront and industry in Buffalo. Finally, “Drifting from Outside to Inside, Inside to Outside” by Soyeon Jung is a quiet, lyrical piece that makes perfect use of the gallery’s window, illustrating exclusion and inclusion.

All three exhibitions continue at CEPA Gallery in the Market Arcade through March 18.

—cynnie gaasch

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