Owen Kydd, Color Shift @Beauchene

JTF (just the facts): A total of 8 video works, shown on black bordered display screens, and hung in the single room gallery space on the second floor. All of the works are perpetual loop videos made in 2012 or 2013. The screens are sized either 37x21 ("40 inch") or 21x12 ("24 inch"); 6 of the works are shown on 40 inch screens, 1 work is shown on a 24 inch screen, and there is 1 diptych (a single image spread across two screens) on two 40 inch screens. The videos range in duration from 3 to 5 minutes, and are available in editions of 3+2AP. This is Kydd's first solo show in New York. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: The boundary lines between photography and video used to be so simple - photography was used for still images and video was used for motion and elapsed time, and the cross pollination of the two disciplines led to photographs that were "cinematic" in the way they were framed or in the way their narratives were staged. But now that every camera on the market includes the ability to easily shoot high resolution video, it isn't surprising that many photographers are more liberally stepping into the world of video to expand their artistic options, and that a new generation of artists is growing up unconcerned with the old definitional bright lines.

Owen Kydd's videos inhabit this semantic netherworld, falling somewhere between extended "durational" photographs and still videos. His works begin with a fixed, static camera angle, and are followed by subtle, almost imperceptible changes that come with the passing of a few minutes. A bright retail display of striped wall board and empty shelving seems perfectly frozen until the paper bell twists, the blue plastic shivers, and the tiny string wiggles in the invisible breeze. His works demand sustained, attentive observation, or the subtleties of a flicker of light across a mylar balloon or the shifting grip of woman clutching a phone will be missed entirely. The overall effect is a heightened sense of awareness of the image at hand, and an intense visual scouring of each work, in search of slow, minute changes.

While most of the videos stay fixed on one scene, one of the works cycles through a handful of separate moments, where quiet nighttime storefronts and interiors are punctuated by glances of reflected light that pass over their surfaces; the fleeting swooshes across a chartreuse green corner are like a muted ghost of a dance. The whipsaw folding and unfolding of a black trash bag is more obvious in its study of motion, with a slight echo of the plastic bag trapped in a sidewalk cyclone from American Beauty. And a planter of fake flowers points to a more complex extension of Kydd's craft, adding a perspective altering doubled effect to his arsenal, jarring the pavement into jutting abstract layers while the leaves sway in the wind.

What I find most intriguing about these works is their investigation of how motion can be included in photography, and not just in the sense of blurs and other effects used to imply motion, but in real movement over time. Kydd's works retain the strict conceptual formality of frozen photographic moment, but simultaneously open up doors to something more fluid. While Fiona Tan and Gillian Wearing have experimented with video portraiture that feels aware of its relationship to photography, Kydd's images seem to emerge from a different starting point, beginning with more rigid theories of photography which are then expanded and reconsidered in the context of unlimited time and movement. For me, his works are a kind of signpost, signaling that one strand of digital age photography is rapidly evolving away from the single, canonical decisive moment we have long taken as given.

Collector's POV: The works in this show are priced as follows. The single screen works are $8500 each and the two screen diptych is $15000. Kydd's work has not yet reached the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the best/only option for those collectors interested in following up.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here) 
• Interview: Lay Flat (here) 

Owen Kydd, Color Shift
Through February 24th

Nicelle Beauchene Gallery
327 Broome Street (upstairs)
New York, NY 10002

Chris Wiley, Technical Compositions @Beauchene

JTF (just the facts): A total of 13 color photographs, framed in  custom plywood frames, and hung in the small single room gallery space. All of the works are archival inkjet prints, made in 2012. The works come in two sizes: 26x18 (in editions of 4+2AP) and 41x27 (also in editions of 4+2AP). There are 4 large prints and 9 small prints in the show. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Chris Wiley's photographs of found architectural geometries are executed with an exacting sense of compositional rigor. They are strict and precise, the juxtapositions of textures and shapes deftly controlled to maximize formal contrast in a two dimensional plane. While this nothing particularly new in photography, Wiley has taken this idea to near its logical extreme, crafting images with an undeniable affinity for visual structure, plucked from the chaos of city streets and pared down with almost mathematical austerity.

The best of the images on view here are a patchwork of competing patterns and textures. Zig-zag stairs contrast with the smooth concrete of a nearby wall, which is punctuated by the slash of a handrail and its shadow, abutting the corrugated metal of a security door. It is a symphony in muted grey, with sharp edges and uncompromising severity. Similarly, a jumble of discarded materials becomes a sculptural puzzle: wavy cement slabs hold down a flecked orange carpet pad, which is covered by blue tarps and intersected by rusty green pipes. Other images are built on the meticulous alignment of lines and angles, with just a hint of wear and tear. Brick walls intersect with plywood squares, gridded orange tiles come loose, and curved arcs in yellow and brown converge into stripes. Large interlocking tiles give way to fluted columns and finally to a rough expanse of light blue paint.

If these photographs were printed large and mounted as glossy objects, you might for a moment mistake them as a conceptual product of 1980s Dusseldorf. But the bright sunlight in the streets and the striped plywood frames upend that preliminary hypothesis; so perhaps they are distant relatives of some of Lewis Baltz' 1970s prototype works or Anthony Hernandez' tile walls, or just the extension of formal photographic ideas that have been around for years. All in, I liked the feeling of ordered delight in these photographs, and of the complex wonder of man-made surfaces being seen again for the first time.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced as follows. The 26x18 prints are $3000 each and the 41x27 prints are $6000 each. Wiley's work has not yet entered the secondary markets, so gallery retail is likely the only option for interested collectors at this point.
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Review/Feature: Artefuse (here)
• Towards a Warm Math at On Stellar Rays, curated by Wiley (here)

Chris Wiley, Technical Compositions

Through June 3rd

Nicelle Beauchene Gallery

21 Orchard Street

New York, NY 10002