Marc Mayer
Marc Mayer is a contributor to the Brooklyn Rail.
Chih-Chien Wang: A Bright Circle
By Marc MayerThere’s a quietness to Chih-Chien Wang’s photographs, in aggregate as well as individually. Like Vilhelm Hammershøi and Giorgio Morandi, he’s a stay-at-home artist for the most part. In fact, he stays mostly in the kitchen. His humble poetry of daily life has an opportunistic iconography, pleasant things noticed while going about his day. But the signature subject is groceries. The fruit and leafy things he eats, or their detritus, are shot in morning light against backgrounds tinted pale. The neutral studio lighting promotes the isolated subject, but sometimes a darker setting is used for more insistence. Generally, these portraits of comestibles aren’t tantalising. Cut or otherwise abstracted by meal preparation, they may be partially or even largely consumed, or just shy of expiration.
Dan Graham
By Marc MayerDan Graham died a year ago at 79. Although his diverse corpus is relatively modest in size, Graham holds a prominent place in the canon and, after seeing the five well-coordinated tribute exhibitions currently on view throughout the city, I feel sure that he always will.
