Shadows, afterthoughts, and accidental images provide a foundation for an exhibit by Real Art Ways. The works that comprise the Shadow Show explore the edge of awareness: the lingering effects of memory and trauma, scribbles and graffiti, the aesthetics of underlying forms, the unconscious ignorance of the boundaries between the public and the private. The collection emerged as artist Elizabeth Keithline realized that her own work and the work of her colleagues had come to focus on the remnants of experience–half-hidden traces that make up an often overlooked record.
Two interesting themes emerge from the pieces. Works by Richard Goulis and Bert Crenca examine the ways in which people create a sense of personal space at work. Goulis uses a set of jewel-sorting trays to sketch out the emotional lives of workers, who drew on the wooden frames during long, monotonous workdays. Crenca presents personal doodles, surrealistic images that emerged in the margins of papers as he daydreamed.
The dangerous lowering of the expectation of privacy appears in other elements of the exhibit. Samuel Ekwurtzel’s collection of photos, “Living Spaces of People Who Are Selling Their Television,” uses the reflections in TV screens on EBay to reveal the ways in which people unintentionally open their lives to others. Street photos by Erik Gould show people unconcerned with the fact that they are being photographed, living in a world in which surveillance has become part of the background.
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. Historian Shae Davidson's research interests include public policy and the relationship between culture and civil society. His publications range from articles on industrial history to absurdist poetry.
