Art Lies, Volume 31, Summer 2001 Page: 56
84 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Catherine Chalmers
Rob Ziebell
Two Photographers
DBERMAN GALLERY
AUSTIN
by Rebecca CohenI love when art intrudes on life,
muscling its way into quotidian events,
conveying new significance to the status
quo. The other day I noticed what
appeared to be a couple of twigs stuck to
one side of our back door. Upon closer
inspection I discovered our ordinary
portal had become the love nest for a
pair of mating mantises. I ran outside
every 15 minutes for the next hour,
hoping to be there for the main event.
My sudden attentiveness to the insect
world is thanks to DBerman Gallery's
recent exhibition of color photographs by
New York-based Catherine Chalmers.
Her 40-by-60 inch chromogenic
prints turn the natural world upside
down, causing human viewers to pause
and reconsider. We humans ordinarily
pay no attention to nature's mating and
eating games, but when they're presented
hundreds of times life size on a gallery
wall, as with the mantises, it's much eas-
ier to submit to prurient voyeurism than
to turn away. Chalmer's photographs
both delight and, occasionally, repulse.
The dramatic white backdrops
Chalmers employs suggest a theatrical
rather than natural setting, jarring the
viewer even further, though the photog-
rapher explains that she is simply remov-
ing distractions. Her graphic, theatrical-
ly scaled images are much more artful
artifice than natural science.
Back to the mantises: when they finish
copulating, Ms. Mantis eats her partner's
face off, and then devours the rest of
him. While I missed the action outside
my house, this sequence is shown explic-
itly in Sex (during)/Sex (after). Chalmers
has obtained and sheltered mantises,
pinkies (baby mice), snakes, caterpillars,
and frogs, photographing them as they
eat, copulate, and die. "My job is about
90 percent zookeeping and 10 percent
photography," she says, adding that she
does not harm her subjects, as some
561 ARTL!ES Summer 2001critics have suggested. "I put my
energy into raising animals, not
hurting them."
I frankly doubt that there is a
huge audience ready to live with
nature so exploded in scale and
isolated from context. The rest of
us can find Chalmer's "encoun-
ters between mates, predators,
and prey" in Food Chain, a book
published by Aperture. The
book's images portray a brilliant-
ly colored food chain: jade green
caterpillars eating a juicy red
tomato, praying mantis eating a
caterpillar (revealing its juicy red guts), a
tarantula eating a praying mantis,
and...well, you get the point.
Rob Ziebell, a photographer living in
Castroville, Texas, offered somewhat
more lyrical nature experiences as a
counterpoint to Chalmers's nature stud-
ies. If Chalmers uses living nature to go
for the jugular, Ziebell concentrates on
flora rather than fauna, juxtaposing veg-
etables and fruit against richly patterned
backgrounds to create settings that are
positively baroque. His portraits are also
displayed much larger than life, in 20-
by-24 inch and 30-by-40 inch prints;
sometimes he carves or cuts his subjects,
or arranges them in positions that sug-
gest they are doing more than waiting to
become breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Of
particular poignancy to me were twin
peas in a huge, single pod presented ver-
tically against a particularly lush floral
print background. This particular Fuji
Supergloss Print inspired me (the moth-
er of identical twins girls) to return for
second and third looks.
In fact, all of Ziebell's color-drenched
photos reward close consideration. They
glow with a mysterious light that uncanni-
ly highlights their central images with an
otherworldly flame that shines from
within. Hardly natures morts, his garishlyRon Ziebell
Twist (from the Peels and Slices Series), 2000
Fuji Supergloss Print
Courtesy of DBerman Gallery
colored arrangements throb with life,
albeit life that appears alien in origin.
Perhaps this facility with lighting can be
traced to Ziebell's experience as a film-
maker (his feature length film, This State
I'm In, has been screened at numerous
museums and on Houston's PBS affiliate).
In any case, his fruity and veggie "actors
and actresses" certainly suggest characters
eager to stand center stage and sing. ;.
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Kalil, Susie. Art Lies, Volume 31, Summer 2001, periodical, 2001; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth228061/m1/58/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .