Images Studio Tour
Thanksgiving Weekend
Friday October 7 - Monday October 10
10:00 AM to 5:00 PM

Brian Barrer

Contemporary photographic art is approaching a crossroads. From the diversions of taste, plurality of context, and accessibility of the medium, both the observer and the observed are confronted with a fundamental problem.

This problem lay precisely in the assumption of a universality and presence that accompany claims to purity and the absolute. As an artist my work eschews traditional forms in an active refusal of such universality. It is this refusal that underlines both a radial critique of traditional modern conventions and their failure to establish themselves with the kinds of authority and centrality that characterizes their central claims.

The more one explores the immediate art-historical and critical context of my collection, the more one recognizes how specific the claims for it are, and so also, how easily they can be blurred or lost; one sees in particular how easily a structural appraisal can retreat into one that is merely thematic. What is more, the irony of this assessment is evident in a literal reading of my work. The overt symbolism of power through both imagery and composition is seen.

My work shows that even the subjective record of sense experience, the “sense-image,” is not a direct copy of actual experience, but has been projected through the process of montage into a new dimension, and more or less can be seen as a for transcendental painting. It has not the protean, mercurial elusiveness of real visual experience, but unity and lasting identity that makes it an object of the mind’s possession rather than that of sensation, Yet specific claims are required – in fact, the figurative representations ultimately historicize the past and break from tradition with a vivid and seemingly vexatious use of colour and tone, contrast with contemporary urban decay, and a dissonance of composition and figure. This emphasis on the importance of the subject matter as opposed to individual expressive style.