—no thing: situations and flattened pictorial space arising from the triangle like in a Japanese print. Because the artist is totally present in the image, the image contains
him. To define the lyric: you had to be there, that’s all, oh and you couldn’t have any ideas and one must rehearse (prepare for the death (of the idea)) one's craft beforehand.
—harlequin-wise non-perspective space is divided, triangulated and both balanced and spilling: the dark and light found to be interpenetrating thereby becoming a vehicle, a still from a flattened parade, a frieze this frozen wheel now moves us. The narration has been compressed: we are now nowhere. We moved that far.
—through participating in the tension set up at the poles, the opposites (some are actual poles, others the arms of a triangle, some are pairs, things repeated) we’re allowed a secular glimpse of the eternal because again, we’re getting nowhere.
—from the delicate electricity of the bitter-sweet to the standoffish tension of a white part and a black part, just there, balanced and alive, we may see how the world snaps together. These images are relatively small, so their tonal-range springs are wound tight. The images were a gift given to the restless, the solitarily vigilant, the well-prepared.
—in beauty: guilelessness and loss of innocence. Having been moved, having stumbled upon an “image” (a “place” where we’re involved in the reconciliation of the polar world), we can see our limits, we’re free to do that. The pairings within the image are absurd and it’s a brave and humorous act that places them before us: the same one that allows us to see them in ourselves.
- William Renschler
Michael Wilson, 'Photographs From and For...Heads Bowed Eyes Closed, No One Looking Around' at the Iris Book Cafe, 1331 Main St. at Woodward, Cincinnati, OH 45202. Phone: 513.381.2665. Through August 7, 2009.
Photo: Wilson, Michael. Untitled, Newport, KY, 1984.
