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Thursday, November 12, 2009

Visual Art Currently Hanging: Michael Van Horn

Posted by Jen Graves on Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 9:18 AM

When you see this photograph in the gallery, you can read the words on the sign if you stand within a limited area in front of it and slightly to the right of the center of the image. Otherwise, the words blur together.

Here, on this screen, they seem to blur too much to read. (Am I right? It's hard for me to get perspective because I already know what the words are, so I can read them, but that might just be my memory filling in for my lack in perception on the screen.)

In case you can't make it out, the sign says, "Any day on this side of the flower bed is a good day."

The photograph is by Michael Van Horn. It's a straight-ahead image taken from another, specific time and place—this night, this church, these weedy dianthus flowers in bloom. But it also is a site you visit now, as you are trying to decipher the sign, moving your body around the hanging photograph the way you would move your body around the sign itself. It's a conflation of there and here, a superzone.

Van Horn's photographs, along with works by his UW colleagues Rebecca Cummins, Paul Berger, and Ellen Garvens, are at Benham Gallery. This is the gallery's last show ever. It closes December 12.

Comments (9) RSS

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This wasn't taken at a church... it was taken at the Wallingford Chevron station at Woodlawn & 45th. Note the ATM sign and the car vacuum in the background. Still, that sign is an excellent source of wisdom...

Posted by former wallingforder on November 12, 2009 at 9:59 AM

I like how when you click on the photo, it pops up smaller, not bigger.

Posted by Fnarf

on November 12, 2009 at 10:11 AM

Another gallery goes under. This is really sad news, which unfortunately, has become oh so common. I think I'll stop in today and check out this show.

Posted by Senor Guy on November 12, 2009 at 10:18 AM

@1: Thanks for correction! I don't know my churches from my gas stations, apparently.

@2: Oy. Sorry?

Posted by Jen Graves on November 12, 2009 at 11:29 AM

1 beat me to it (by several hours). The pithy sayings on that sign are hilarious in a campy way, and they make me snicker a bit whenever I ride the 44 and sit in interminable traffic.

Posted by -ink on November 12, 2009 at 11:41 AM