Alan Scarritt

On seeing Alan Scarritt’s recent exhibition at Cynthia Broan Gallery, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Rosalind Krauss’s landmark essay on ’70s art, “Notes on the Index, Part I” (1977), even though most of the objects on view were made in the last three years. Everywhere in the twenty-seven works of photography, video, sound, sculpture, and installation were those trace markers that function simultaneously as indicators of presence and ciphers of absence: photograms (“that subspecies of photo,” according to Krauss, “which forces the issue of photography’s existence as an index”) showing hands

previews September 2006

“The Shadow”

Italian critic and curator Lea Vergine marshals work—some made expressly for the show—in all media by some forty artists, including both young Italians (Sebastiano Mauri, Ottonella Mocellin and Nicola Pellegrini, Margherita Morgantin) and an older, international set (Christian Boltanski, Joan Jonas, Markus Raetz) in what is sure to be a stirring survey of the dark side.

Mounting an exhibition on the theme of the shadow taps into the history of representation at least as far back as Plato’s cave. Actual penumbrae, or even the discourse of original and copy, however, are less Lea Vergine’s concern here than this fleeting phenomenon’s often portentous associations with others and doubles. The Italian critic and curator marshals work—some made expressly for the show—in all media by some forty artists, including both young Italians (Sebastiano Mauri, Ottonella Mocellin and Nicola Pellegrini, Margherita Morgantin) and an older, international