At a moment when social and political concerns seem to be the privileged subject matters of art, the artists in this show engage with the rather old-fashioned issues of spirituality, perception, and the inner self. This intimate exhibition presents simplicity and lightness as values rather than defects; this is literally so in the work of Euan Macdonald, who depicts a set of three falling—or is it floating?—pianos against a clear blue sky. Uta Barth maintains a lightness of spirit as she rethinks the image of a single flower across multiple pictures; Peter Callesen, on the other hand, uses his medium, paper, and a technique that requires absolute concentration to suggest a similar subtlety. Marcel van Eeden and David Musgrave also use paper, this time as a ground for intense black-and-white images that, despite the heaviness of the graphite mark, remain airy and poetic. Jonathan Monk’s rather small photographs, decorated with light-refracting crystal earrings, humorously deflate a famous work of art, turning it into a dance floor. As for the unifying thread, in the words of Italo Calvino, these artists fruitfully undertake nothing less than “a search of lightness as a reaction to the weight of living.”
