Monday, March 17, 2008

stories


recently, i've seen Jessica Bruah's work on 20x200, on Exposure Compensation, and in 31 under 31. her project is called "Stories," and the scenarios are self-portraits based on fictional stories. i'm a bit mixed on them, but maybe i'm just not grasping on to the stories they depict. she says that her current influences are "Tina Barney, David Hilliard, Anna Gaskell, Gregory Crewdson and Cindy Sherman." that's a lot of influences, but the 4x5 selective focus and the sense of miniaturized, fictional catastrophe here actually remind me of Corinne May Botz's project The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.

i like the way the two images above look together though...like little proliferations of paper leaves...

the top photo is for sale for $20 through the 20x200 project.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just recently noticed too that she's a chosen artist in Catherine Edelman's Chicago Project. Some of my favorites of work is displayed on there. I've always found that to be such a difficult question to answer, "who are your biggest influences?"

Anonymous said...

What do you all have to say about the notion that her work doesn't leave enough ambiguity with the viewer? They are so deliberate and precise, the blank post-it notes, the symmetrical shapes of the tissues. Might these be too heavy handed conceptually? SRE.