Photography Exhibition  Werner Bargsten and Charles Ramsburg, Danny Turitz, and Edward Fausty

Werner Bargsten presents clay sculptures bound in copper in the exhibition In the Dark: Packages & Shadows. Much of Bargsten’s ceramic work is inspired by childhood memories of the rich, black, Iowa dirt of his family’s farm. The Iowa farm “was fluid and constantly morphing into something else from early spring to the middle of winter, much like my own interior landscape.” He feels that his unconscious is constantly replaying his life like an “endless video loop” inside his head. Snapshots of inner life, his work invite viewers to recognize their own unconscious, human stories. For that reason he does not assign a title to any of his pieces since, once they take form, they belong to others. Vanessa Garcia, writer and curator, states, “…his pieces attempt to break free of their wrapping…seemingly swallow(ing) its copper bindings.”

In On the Wall, Edward Fausty presents a sinuous installation in which hundreds of photographic images are displayed on an accordion folded book entitled Worlds. Harkening back to a dream Fausty had during his second year of college, Worlds uses landscapes done with a fisheye lens in order to replicate the wonder of seeing our planet from above and pondering our footprint upon it. Fausty states, “In Jungian psychology and Buddhist art, the circle is seen as a symbol of the self. I do see these Worlds of mine in that light, as objects of meditation, as refuge for my restless spirit, and, simultaneously, as a little journal of my wanderings upon our world.”

In the Dark: Packages & Shadows features Charles Ramsburg’s delicate, dark and quiet drawings from the series Blind Spot. His works are inspired by when his wife and he built a cabin along side a stream on eighty-two acres of dense woods in the Adirondacks. After thirty-five years in the sparsely treed southwest, verticality, shadows, and water propelled his work into challenging new territories. His drawings in response to woodland walks in the Adirondacks explore his interest in the complexities of dimensionality and spatial contradictions caused by monocular vision. Also featured in the exhibition are Pathing Sticks, which draw on the ancient tradition of the walking staff and its esoteric and functional history, while incorporating organic and manmade materials, seamlessly joined to embody the stillness of an inanimate object with the movement for which it is intended.

In his first solo exhibition at Carter Burden Gallery, Danny Turitz presents intimate oil paintings from his series Carts. Using mystery and metaphor the “homeless shopping carts” that Turitz masterfully paints are seemingly neutral objects that take on an importance beyond the obvious. To Turitz, “A painting of a shrouded outdoor grill, a tangled garden hose, plastic stacked lawn chairs or homeless carts suggest the human condition and the effects of isolation, melancholy and degradation.”
http://www.carterburdengallery.org/upcoming-exhibition