David Gilbert’s photographs depict arrangements he creates in his studio out of whatever happens to be on hand: scrap paper, found detritus, fabric, string, cardboard, and organic matter like branches and flowers. Photographed in soft natural light, his everyday materials take on a heft and drama they might lack if encountered in person. Like vacant theatrical sets, his compositions are self-contained worlds that hint at possible occupants: if we stare long enough, it seems, something just might happen.
The eight photographs in Gilbert’s exhibition “Painted Ladies” (all 2019) play fast and loose with art historical precedent, much like the glamorous architectural anachronisms evoked by the show’s title: San Francisco’s famous Victorian houses, whose brightly painted facades are fanciful 1960s reinterpretations of a nineteenth-century style. Gilbert took the photographs during a residency at Yaddo, where he had to work with a fixed repertoire of props, maximizing limited resources. Certain elements, like a piece of butcher paper painted with black stripes and a veil’s length of gauze, are ripped up and repurposed across multiple arrangements, the modest components used to create effects suggestive of both neoclassical portrait sittings and plein air painting. Like a drag queen fashioning a gown out of trash, Gilbert proves glamour is not so much about what you have as what you do with it...
Matt Sussman
