Atlantean Antiquities
James Gielow began work on his most recent photography series, Atlantean Antiquities: As Accessioned by Plato, circa 360 B.C., in early 2009. The images in Atlantean Antiquities merge classic Greek and Roman portrait busts (shot on location at the Getty Museum in Malibu, CA) with human facial features (most prominently the eyes, belonging to the artists personal friends). Recalling the ancients technique of painting the eyes of the statues (or replacing them with semi-precious stones or gems) in order to make them appear more life-like, Gielow turns the table on this perverse strategy and shifts the dominant art/viewer position, in effect presenting the work of art as the observer.
The resulting constructed images, which he admits are designed to induce a sense of awkwardness from the viewer, interweave the real and the artificial and provide a provocative and humorous commentary to classical character studies, alternately seductive and repellent. Some of the images from this limited edition series were originally exhibited in the group exhibition Garages in San Diego (May 2009), and will be included in the forthcoming exhibition SOCIAL CLIMBING / Part I: On the Move, at Luis De Jesus Seminal Projects, San Diego, from August 8 through September 26, 2009.
James is currently working on a new photography series which he describes as Swifts Gullivers Travels meets early 1970s David Bowie.
