PROOF 15 RUNS TO AUG 2. TUE-SAT 11AM-5PM. GALLERY 44, 401 RICHMOND W, STE 120. 416-979-3941. WWW.GALLERY44.ORG.
A bright spot in Gallery 44’s annual “Proof” show of emerging photographic artists is Michael Love’s Self-Portrait With Rifle: a blurry, black-and-white image of him shooting the camera. It is done with a pellet rifle, the bullet from which makes a hole in a pinhole camera, thus exposing the negative. It is a small but clever comment on the violence of the photographic act — a literalization of Barthes’ punctum, in which the “proof” of the exhibit’s title becomes the existential power of the artist’s marksmanship.
Most of the other works in the exhibit are nicer to look at, but less substantial. One’s eye is drawn to two works by Montrealer Erik Osberg, perhaps because the people in them, Osberg himself and two of his siblings, are so darn cute. The gist is a simple recreation by grown-ups of their childhood photographs. In one image, Osberg’s sister poses in her old Girl Guides uniform; in another Erik and his brother Carl are draped in towels eating toast. In a similar vein are Susan Blight’s works, one of which is, to quote her title, a “self-portrait with [her] Kobe Bryant t-shirt.” The intention, as Blight declares in her exhibition text, is as basic as memorializing the objects she holds dear, drawing attention to “the act of clicking the shutter.” She also, of course, draws attention to herself: a vain counterpoint to Love’s indistinct figure, and its attendant, ambiguous intellectualism.