BELLWETHER is proud to present photos by Marc Grubstein and videos by Adam Putnam.
"Life is a hallucinatory wish." - Sigmund Freud
The nature of a photograph simultaneously freezes and extends a single moment indefinitely. In documenting this crystallized moment one must have an acute awareness of their immediate surroundings. Marc Grubtein's photographs are like moments destined to be at that point in time. They are instants of hyperconsciousness.
The camera serves as an extension of Marc's eye, his aesthetic, and in turn his life experiences. Marc's photographs are visual metaphors that are often dark humored as they depict the absurdity, beauty and grotesqueness surrounding everyday life. The work is not as much a critique of the outside world as a personal quest to capture an original aesthetic. Marc's subject matter is diverse and often questions the notion of beauty, often seeming not have a prejudice towards any image. Each image is an entity unto itself, but when exhibited as part of a whole, the juxtaposition of sensibilities evokes clashing emotions that blur temporal moments with our ever-changing consciousness.
Adam Putnam was born in New York City and as a result has always been aware of living in a box. Add to this his height of 6'8", and you have what some might call a hypersensitivity to space. After years of doing performances where his body was the central focus of his art practice, the architecture of the interior slowly took over as the main point of departure. Adam's most recent videos, latent sexuality and supernatural horror fuse into one entity. Through the use of digital video effects and flat-footed collage, Adam's truncated body is duplicated and fused together forming a nightmarish "double" of himself. This spliced torso writhes in crawlspaces and on office furniture, unable to escape from its predicament. The disjointed figures are sometimes accompanied by mysterious telekinetic forces, which cause everyday objects to spin and crash. It is unclear whether the fused body is responsible for this or if it too is a victim of an unseen force. Behind the veil of these sensational phenomena lie the four walls of the room. Much like a proscenium or empty stage, these spaces become charged with their own presence and are the true subjects of the work, despite the frequent bisections and intrusions of the body.
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