See the current Gregory Crewdson show at the Luhring Augustine Gallery in Chelsea. The show is a bit of a blockbuster and because of the crowds it might take some time until it is your turn to bring your nose so close to each one of the Photographs that you can almost smell suburbia, see the and maybe hope to see hints of grain or discoloration in Crewdson’s work. All visitors seem to do this and they seem rewarded by an obsessive richness of detail in each one of the images. The work looks good, the show is plentiful and all so extensive and complex that only the overseas visitor might bear to see it only once. Whoever can will probably return to the scene and take a closer look, again, move their noses even closer to the images, discover new and fascinating details, see the and smell the flowers, or the gutter, or the skin or the police car.
Some of the photographs are a bit like paintings, meticulously composed with drawings and plans and just the right props. Some started as black and white works and seem to have been colored for this show, to give them better consistency. All of the work seems printed on paper, all in the same size, and all of the work seems to have a very nice, high density of information. More so than most of the currently prized work from the Düsseldorfer Schule, which might be larger in scale sometimes, but not quite as dense.
Crewdson just as Wall (thank you for the link, Todd), is a “cinematic” photographer. The images we see here feel like stills shot in elaborately constructed worlds in high budget Hollywood productions. The show sometimes gives the impression of a multiplex with 20 movies on strange aspects of the inside of suburbia, including alien abduction and covered up abuse.
There is probably a thick layer of reality in these stills, but it is sealed in a story, a sculpture, an installation. This might seem like a completely new concept, but in fact is a return to what painting often used to be before there was, well, the silver screen.
The show is free and definitely worth a visit. If you can not go or do not want to travel, take a look at the Twi which could very well be the catalogue for the exhibition. The book will not break your budget and you can move as close to the paper as you want and nobody will get angry if you leave nose stains in your book. You might.