JOHN CHIARA – PIKE SLIP TO SUGAR HILL
2018-10-22For this exhibition at the gallery, John Chiara handcrafted a custom 50″ x 40″ camera designed to capture Manhattan’s soaring verticality in kaleidoscopic color and with hyperreal clarity. Driving the enormous camera around the city in the bed of a commercial pickup truck, Chiara photographs NYC’s streets and its architecture with equal admiration for glass office towers, Beaux-Arts facades and the backsides of 19th century tenements.
Through the precision barrel lens, images are projected directly onto the scroll of color photographic paper inserted into the camera. During exposure, Chiara burns, dodges and filters the light entering through the lens, working to change the temperature of light and spectrum of color as if in the darkroom. As the image is received onto negative paper, light and shadow are reversed, as are the colors, casting his anonymous skyward views in otherworldly hues. At times resembling a blueprint, an image captured through night vision goggles or an x-ray, the unexpected palette jolts the eye from its malaise of familiarity to a heightened awareness of detail and the rich collage of textures that is New York City.
Opposite – St. Nicholas Avenue at W145th, West, 2018
Exhibition runs through to October 27th, 2018
Yossi Milo Gallery
245 10th Avenue
New York
10001 NY
