STAN DOUGLAS
KEITH EDMIER
FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES
MICHAEL JOAQUIN GREY
PETER HALLEY
RONALD JONES
JOHN MILLER
CHRISTIAN PHILIPP MUELLER
HIRSCH PERLMAN
PAE WHITE
CHRISTOPHER WILLIAMS
FRED WILSON
The exhibition Notational Photographs assembles a group of artists who locate the critical potential of photography in the discursiveness of image production. The idea of capturing a picture - isolated and privileged from the flux of time - is in question. The artists in this show incorporate a self-reflective attempt to the understanding of the medium. Photographs are understood less as self-contained "facts" than as elements within complex narrative structures. When conceptual artists used the camera to document a temporal event, they assumed that a photo as art could "record" both an analytical presumption and represent a specific content. The artists in this exhibition work with sets of photographs that emphasize the linguistic, historical and pictorial potential of photography over representation- the sacred cow of photographic purpose.
Each of these artists develops a system that appears both obscure and arbitrary. Some focus on a commentary on social history, and others emphasize a more personal mystique, but the leap between knowledge (something that can easily be identified) and experience (seeking context to facilitate understanding) is always at issue.