California Museum of Photography presents architecture of resignation by artist Jay Wolke. The exhibition will run from October 13, 2007 to January 06, 2008.
Chicago based artist Jay Wolke has been photographing in southern Italy, specifically the Mezzogiorno region, for the past eight years. The resulting large-format, lush color images describe an elaborate set of physical, social and political structures, manifesting in an extraordinary folding together of visual information embedded in the landscape.
On one level these photographs are referential and documentary but on another they are about what cannot be explicitly seen, what is hidden and implied. The works convey purposeful neutrality; constructions of selected non-fictions resonating between historical and contemporary meaning. The larger narratives of the marks made, marks abandoned, and marks erased represent numerous conquerors and occupiers, from the Greeks to the Spanish to the Camorra.
The subsequent adaptations and acquiescence of those subject to this dominance are evident, and represent a major portion of Wolke’s photographic attention. Often, architecture and technology have only been used as facades, hiding the much greater exchanges of political power.
With great promises of progress, the land has been exploited and parceled out for the convenience of a few and accepted with resignation and submission by the many. -- www.cmp.ucr.edu
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