Viewing Elad Lassry’s work at the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis is rather discomforting — at first. Context for the work ranges from very little to none, with even the museum’s description of the exhibit only managing to catalogue the sorts of things that are present in Lassry’s images. It follows, then, that they should title the exhibit “Sum of Limited Views” – the exhibit-goer is presented with fairly small prints, neatly in a row, placed into colored frames that match the photos within. Organized, sort of, by wall, all the prints are more or less the same size. In another room, two 16mm films by Lassry play side-by-side to the tune of a hard-working projector. In short: here is some visual art; you are going to look at it or get out.
Personally, I would recommend sticking around to look: Lassry’s works are powerful, if not necessarily expansive. Definitely not Gregory Crewdson but not quite Edward Weston either, Lassry’s pictures are rigid depictions of forms, from lipstick to cats to kitchen implements to people. People are blurred, perhaps in-camera or perhaps digitally, often with duplicate eyes or ears or other parts of the body. A dog on one wall sports six legs. The color scheme of the images appears tightly controlled; I very much doubt a single one was shot anywhere but within a studio. This is a good thing; Lassry has isolated not only the shape but the colors of the objects he’s shooting. Having a small color palette means that what colors exist in the images are intensified, giving even the more mundane objects an intensified look. This further breaks the items down into more a collection of shapes than a standard commercial image of, say, eggs.
The video pieces that feature as a part of this exhibit are of a similar, tightly controlled appearance. One features a shot of a woman’s face followed by a zebra; another features actors making bland faces and gestures at the camera while sitting in and around an optical illusion. The focus is just as tight, the colors just as intense and specific as in the still images. We’re not meant to see anything beyond what is just in the image itself – the “meaning” or whatever you’d want to call it is all within the frame, within the objects on the screen or a print. The exhibition is called “Sum of Limited Views” and that is just what we get: a collection of very, very controlled images, explorations of the forms of items both produced and living. They combine together in a way that looks in an almost uncomfortably deep manner at our own lives and the ‘things’ we use.
Sum of Limited Views is, apparently, Elad Lassry’s first major museum show (at least in the United States), but it will not be his last. These images and films may not be excessively complicated, but they do more than just show the viewer a series of objects or people or actions, they ask the viewer to look more closely at the world around them, to see the shapes and colors that abound in everything one encounters. The images of living creatures can be unsettling, but that, too, is a “form” of life – just as the meaningless gestures or empty stares in the videos are a part of how we act every day. A picture is, no matter what, a “limited view” – the audience sees only what the photographer wants them to see – and this is a conceit that Elad Lassry takes great advantage of, controlling everything about the way we see the things he wants us to see.
Elad Lassry, “Sum of Limited Views” runs until Jan. 2, 2011 at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. See contemporarystl.org/ for more information.
