Artist Duane Michals’s work on display at the Carnegie Museum

With the free access to the Carnegie Museum of Art that Chatham students’ ID cards provide, it is shocking that more people don’t take the time to enjoy this cultural experience.  Specifically when the exhibits are constantly changing, like the collection of photography by Pittsburgh native Duane Michals, which is on display until February 16.

Upon entering the Duane Michals exhibit, one might initially find him or herself somewhat confused by the photographer’s apparent criticism of the photographic medium.

The writing on the walls of the exhibit suggest that Michals is very much against the idea of the ‘powerful single image’ and feels that a single photograph can not convey a poignant narrative–a counterintuitive opinion for someone who makes a living taking photographs.

Photo Credit: Katerina Sarandou

Photo Credit: Katerina Sarandou

The further into the exhibit one gets, however, the more apparent it becomes that Michals is not being critical, he just sees art in a different way than most.

He was once quoted as saying, “I am an expressionist and by that I mean I’m not a photographer or a writer or a painter or a tap dancer, but rather someone who expresses himself according to his needs.”

He also expressed the idea that he does not trust his eyes to find images to photograph, but rather his artwork comes from within himself. As a result his goal is not to document objective reality, but is to create his own introspective reality, based on preconceived images in his head, and to tell a story.

In this way, Michals’s tendency towards creating photo-essays, and writing on his photographs lends itself to his goal of telling a story, or creating a social commentary.

Photo Credit: Katerina Sarandou

Photo Credit: Katerina Sarandou

In the first piece in the exhibit, entitled, “Things are Queer”, Michals photographed a scene, within a scene, within a scene, and so on until the final image expanded out into the same scene as the original image. Though it may not have been the most compelling of his pieces, the viewer is immediately hooked by the idea, and it is easy to find oneself going back and forth between the first and last images trying to wrap one’s head around the concept.

That piece perfectly illustrates one of Michal’s quotes, in which he says, “My photographs are about questions. They are not about answer.”  Each photo in the set gives a bit more information about the narrative, but in the end the viewer is left with nothing more than what he or she started with.

This piece also sets up an expectation for the rest of the show.

Viewing his work is like reading a novel, in that the viewers constantly find themselves wanting to skip ahead to find out how it will end. However it was different from a novel in that the ending gives no concrete answers, only more questions.

Another highlight of the exhibit was the section entitled, “In the Mind’s Eye.”

This examination of human nature is filled with compelling photographs that stick in the viewers’ heads long after they’ve left the exhibit.

Photo Credit: Katerina Sarandou

Photo Credit: Katerina Sarandou

In one such piece, entitled, “Christ in New York,” Michals manipulated photographs so that a halo appeared around a man’s head as he intervened in various upsetting events, like a poor immigrant woman eating dog food for dinner, and a gay man being beaten in an alley. In the last photograph the “Christ” character is seen laying on the ground, and Michals’s caption says, “Christ is killed by a mugger with a handgun. The second coming had occurred and no one noticed.”

As a quote on the wall of the exhibit read, “[Michals] disrupted the medium’s trajectory with a radical new way of picture-making.” The fact that he used multiple photos, and text, to turn an image in his head into a visual piece of social commentary makes his work groundbreaking and effective.

The overall theme of Michals’s body of work is one of subtle retaliation against an oppressive system, with the ‘system’ in question being everything from traditional artistic practices, to the social and political atmosphere of the times.

This is especially true when his work–mostly from the late 20th century–is put in the context of the times, when society was fighting for social change, and was rejecting traditional values.  Michals is an utterly original artist, and his photography is not only beautiful, but also made makes the viewer think.

Chatham professor Corey Escoto exhibits art at Carnegie Museum of Art

If you take a trip to the Carnegie Museum of Art in Oakland, chances are you will notice a prominently displayed sign outside of Gallery One that features a name familiar to Chatham University and its students. Corey Escoto, a Chatham professor for the past five years, currently has an ongoing solo exhibition in the CMOA as a part of the 2014 Pittsburgh Biennial.

His exhibition is titled “Corey Escoto: Sleight of Hand,” and features his ‘experimental polaroids’ paired with sculptures that work alongside the photos. The polaroid images themselves, 16 in total hanging on the walls, feature different images pieced together in geometric forms instead of the standard solitary image that is conventionally associated with instant polaroid photos and photography.

These altered images play on our willingness to accept photographs as a concrete representation of truth and the world around us, when in fact they too can be so easily manipulated. They also play along with the ideas of chance, mistake and experimentation, which is in fact a part of how they came to be.

Photo Credit: Alice Shy

Photo Credit: Alice Shy

After dealing with the difficulties associated with lost digital photo files, a stolen computer, as well as a lost phone, Escoto decided to try polaroids as his photography medium.

With a large quantity of the instant film, Escoto says that with the polaroids, ” I could take pictures of anything and everything and not feel too fearful about not making great photos.”  They provided a chance to have more freedom with experimenting beyond the conventional and straightforward uses of the polaroids. The new medium brought with it the freedom to experiment and make mistakes.

The polaroids in the exhibition were produced by selectively covering areas of the light sensitive film with cut stencils to control the light exposure. This is how his camera stencil method came to be, and he has been fine-tuning and experimenting with the process for nearly three years.

The camera stencil technique that Escoto uses allows for the film to go through multiple exposures instead of the usual single exposure and provides them with a look that appears to almost to have been created and manipulated in Photoshop. This creates geometric forms within the larger images that unite fragmented smaller images of different places or objects.

Photo Credit: Indigo Baloch

Photo Credit: Indigo Baloch

The various images and moments are flattened into a single pattern in one planar surface. By using this technique of multiple exposures, the instant nature of the polaroid photos is undermined, as the end product now requires more than one exposure to be finalized, but it also creates new potential for what can come of their use.

In the exhibit at the CMOA, the polaroids are accompanied by related sculptures that bring the geometric shapes and patterns of the images into three-dimensional space.

Photo Credit: Indigo Baloch

Photo Credit: Indigo Baloch

Working against the flatness of the photographs that they are modeled after, the sculptures focus on surface and are made from materials that resemble natural materials, but are exclusively synthetic and man-made. They are made from goods such as wallpaper, paint rollers, printed vinyl, spray foam, cardboard, plastic, contact paper, and Plexiglas.

This is not the first major exhibition that Escoto has been a featured part of. Last spring, he had a solo show at Taymour Grahne Gallery in Manhattan and the year prior to that he had a solo show in Brooklyn.

The show in Brooklyn, presented at Regina Rex, a small and out of the way artist run space, was able to create other opportunities for Escoto, including his current show at the Carnegie.

He says, “each show is important, even the small ones, and I try to produce the best possible outcome given the situation for every show, big or small.” This just goes to prove that every show that an artist puts their work into is important, regardless of size, as they can lead to greater opportunities in the future.

“Corey Escoto: Sleight of Hand” is on display in Gallery One of the Carnegie Museum of Art through September 29, 2014.