Highway viaducts, industrial buildings, hangars, and small, abandoned structures that once functioned as frontier checkpoints are among the subjects Josef Schulz has chosen for the large-scale photographs in “Crossings.” The works initially appear to be verisimilar portrayals but soon reveal themselves to be digitally manipulated. Occupying the boundary between reality and imagination, the images present the structures in recognizable yet subtly altered form, the artist having erased highway signs, posters on walls, company initials on buildings, and people. And so a gigantic hangar, emptied of certain features, is transformed into a vividly colored monolith, an abstract monument to contemporary life. And a viaduct, stretching out into an evanescent backdrop, is no longer a functional structure but a cyclopean sculpture.
