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Tinsquo's curatorial project, Adjacent To Life, presents pepi do it by Pepi G. Friedman.
Caregivers take photographs of children, especially when they are young. But what does a child see? The works on display here, compositions “made” and images “taken” by an infant, conjure classic debates about meaning and signification in photography. Can photos index the will of an author whose thought, prior to speech, is largely instrumental? In the case of an artist only partially initiated into any community of language and representation, it would seem impossible to glean intentions from photographic effects.
Audiences often ponder what exactly an artist meant to convey, but the author’s subjectivity operates here on a different plane. With these photos we encounter intention not in the symbolic language of composition, but in the manipulation of a device, in the claim to a tool in the representational world of adults. Pepi seized our phones with purpose (we fretted; should she be engaging with technology so young?). This exhibit recognizes her declaration: “I am here. I am part of this community, even if I have not yet mastered its languages.”
With these interventions, Pepi interrupts our habitual documentation of her as a passive object of affection. She pulls the brakes on the 24/7 recording of her life. Some photographs seem to carve out significance from the morass of everyday experience. Others render — by accident, surely? — pleasing abstract forms. Altogether, they provide an occasion for you, the viewer, to recall memories, to make connections, to invent stories, and to engage in your own subjective experience.
- Andrew Anastasi and Rose Friedman
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pepi do it is on view through March 8, 2024 at the Adjacent To Life gallery housed in Ninth Street Espresso (341 E. 10th Street at Ave B, New York City). Opening reception: Saturday, February 10, 7:00 - 9:00.
Posted by Mark Roth at February 10, 2024 10:45 AM