PMA Biennial – a downer for photography

Kristie©Siri Sahaj Kaur. All Rights Reserved

Many of us are feeling a bit schizophrenic after viewing the Portland Museum of Art Biennial that opened April 7.

If you’re a member of Maine’s fine art photography community, you can’t help but be thrilled at the number of photographers included in this year’s exhibit and what that implies. But…where’s the zing?

If you want that thrilling dose of zing that the PMA Biennial usually delivers, spend most of your time experiencing the installations in the exhibit. They are terrific, and the strangers I’ve watched enjoying them, and the colleagues I’ve talked to about them, heartily agree. As Edgar Allen Beem says in his review of the Biennial in this week’s Forecaster – “that’s what Biennials are all about – discovery.” The installations underscore that purpose in spades.

So how did it all break down in the photography and paintings selection? While I never regret an opportunity to view works by Jon Edwards and John G. Kelley, and count these two high-achievers as close colleagues, seeing works by them from 2007 and 2008 was far from a discovery. I reviewed Kelley’s exquisite “Aroostook Song” in this blog almost two years ago. A mediocre-quality and forgettable content digital print from a 2002 negative  (“Treasure Hunt”) by Michael Kahn (whose mammoth sepia-toned prints I have always loved) and the lovely “Maternal” (2009)by Mark Ketzer just further compounded the disappointment for me. Did the jurors from away have such a sugary vision of Maine that they felt the “traditional arts” (photography and painting) selections needed to balance the “now” of the selected installations works, and appease us real Mainers with works we would feel “comfortable” around? I sure hope not.

What I’m not seeing, and what we need to see after last fall’s CMCA 150 artist show –Photographing Maine, Ten Years Later, 2000-2009 – is where is Maine’s photography community going, not “where has it been?”. Did many artists who are experimenting courageously and successfully with new ways of making pictures simply not submit work?

En Route/New York City #1©Liv Kristin Robinson. All Rights Reserved

Well a couple of them did, thank goodness. Liv Kristin Robinson’s four on-metal urban landscapes (“En Route Series, New York City #1, #2, #3, #4”) were getting a lot of attention and deserve it. (Full disclosure: Robinson’s work is represented by VoxPhotographs). Not only are the works part of a much bigger body of work in Robinson’s “En Route” series (pictures documenting her innumerable trips by bus back and forth to NYC to support her ailing father) these images are very new (2010) and presented in a new on-metal format that supported their style, content and the idea that “discovery”  is what the Biennial is all about for the rest of us.

Window Seats©Heath Paley. All Rights Reserved.

Heath Paley’s “Window Seats” (2010) was getting a lot of attention too. This image is a departure for Paley whose website features well-executed large format scenic photographs at bargain prices. I loved “Window Seats” as did everyone I talked to about the exhibit. Paley took first prize at the Maine Photography Show last year for his image “Curved”, but “Window Seats” is in another league altogether.

Museum Light on Guardrail©Richard Veit. All Rights Reserved

Two photographs by Richard Veit also supported my idea of what the Biennial should do to my brain: “Museum Light on Guardrail” (yes, 2007) and “Bienecke Library Courtyard” (2008) showed me something I hadn’t seen before and I think they are terrifically original. They remind me of some works by Ilya Askinazi that blow me away – rigidly disciplined visual creations of building and parking garage interiors that push easily into the realm of the highest level of abstract content.

Beinecke Museum Courtyard©Richard Veit. All Rights Reserved

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The 45″x35″  Siri Sahaj Kaur chromogenic print “Kristie” (2007) that kicks off this posting is gorgeous. Unfortunately, it’s presence is diluted by the fact that most of the other color photographs in the exhibit are also large in-your-face portraits.

In June the Photo National 2011 opens at the University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor. It will include many Maine artists and the partnering exhibit is cyanotypes and callotypes by Thomas Hager. From the teaser images on this link, this exhibit promises to move us forward and connect those of us in Maine’s photographic community with the outside world in a most scintillating and challenging way. We’re getting desperate for it.

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(I’m not going to comment on the emphasis on the traditional when it comes to paintings selected for this Biennial exhibit, but the painter I was with at the members’ opening, as well as others with whom I’ve discussed the Biennial, are scratching their heads and sighing. Thank goodness for the painters like Mark Wethli (Cinnamon Girl, 2009 and Kwazy Wabbit, 2009) and Beverly Rippel (Pink Cap Gun 1, 2010) who stepped away from Maine’s seashore and into their own heads to give us work to challenge our senses.)

In short, if only the majority of selected paintings and photographs were in the realm of Alisha Gould’s “Ejecta” (2010) featured in the Museum great hall and the focus of much of the opening night’s excitement and delight, this Biennial would have been the best ever. Instead, it’s a “three shows in one” experience like Beem says in his Forecaster review.  I already know what water and old houses look like… so at the Biennial: Show us something we’ve never seen before – give us a new door to leap through in our imaginations – and give us the chance to experience how one person’s unique vision can change the way the rest of us see the world.

The Portland Museum of Art  Biennial is open through June 5.