Synthetic Environments: Bay Area Photographers Collective at the Mina Dresden Gallery

This is a review of our current exhibition. Read the full review at SF Examiner.com.

The exhibit is titled Synthetic Environments. If nature is the thesis and culture its antithesis, the work here approaches post-millennial landscape photography as synthesis.

Bulldozers, garbage, graffiti, murals, shopping carts, and other urban detritus share photographic space with greenery and sky. The latter barely peek through. These traditional signifiers of landscape genre disappear under the manufactured gloss of environment.

Most of the artists in this exhibit tackle aspects of urban and suburban environments. Alan George’s placid shoppers casually enter the jaws of the consuming beast. Jonah, meet Jaws. It is really nothing more than the gaping front entrance of an outlet called “Souvenir City” inexplicably configured to resemble the open mouth of  a man-eating shark. The pastel off-the-rack outfits of the bait-like customers matches the hues of the bizarre building making them look even more like sugary snacks for the plaster monster. The stars and stripes wave in the breeze atop the fishy building…as does the jolly roger. Heave Ho!

via Synthetic Environments: Bay Area Photographers Collective at the Mina Dresden Gallery.