Three Gems in SOWA

What Makes It Great? / Featured / January 15, 2020

By Suzanne Révy

If you did not go to the first First Friday of the new decade in Boston’s SOWA neighborhood two weeks ago, then you might have missed three small exhibits that are worth a visit. The first is “Tehran Remixed: Party Series” by Amirali Ghasemi at Ars Libri on view through January 28th, 2020, the second is “Laura McPhee: Desert Chronicle” at Carroll and Sons through February 1st, 2020 and the last is Nat Martin’s “Studio Views” at the Kingston Gallery on view through February 2, 2020.

Amirali Ghasemi “Teheran Remixed: Party Series” at Ars Libri, installation photograph by Suzanne Révy

Ghasemi’s “Tehran Remixed: Party Series” was made during the last few years of the reform era under Iran’s former President Khatami, who advocated for freedom of expression, tolerance and a civil society around fifteen years ago. Ghasemi made the photographs to counter images of the veil and suppression that have been common in western media, but he also remained respectful of his subject’s privacy but erasing the figures in each scene. The result is a sense for the bacchanalian joy that young people relish in open societies, yet maintaining anonymity to avoid cringing embarrassment or worse, the possible punishments of more repressive forces. These festive images celebrate a social and vibrant Iranian community.

Laura McPhee “Cottonwood Under Chalk Bluff by the Truckee River, Washoe County, Nevada” 2014 on view at Carroll and Sons, installation photograph by Suzanne Révy

Laura McPhee and Nat Martin address the environment and climate change through pointedly contrasting approaches. McPhee probes the western landscape with a large format camera in this intimate installation of the expansive beauty and decay of arid desert landscapes. The skeletal remains of burnt forest trees in two images made in Idaho, one in snow, the other in deep shadow, bring a foreboding sense of dread; we have squandered so much time in response to the dramatic changes in the environment. But McPhee seems to offer a longer more geologic view, and the bright green leaves of a cottonwood tree against the monochromatic scrub brush near the Truckee River in Nevada or the water gently flowing through black rocks of lave offer a hopeful sense of re-birth.

Nat Martin “Studio Views” at the Kingston Gallery, installation photograph by Suzanne Révy

Nat Martin, on the other hand, stages haunting dreamy images that evoke the instability and the fury of mother nature in response to his worries around climate change. He writes of listening late at night to podcasts in an effort learn more about climate change, and these images emerged as a kind of nervous dream. In fact, the photographs were, for the most part, made at night employing long shutters in his home studio. There is an aura of unease and a of palpable sense of fear in these dark images. Some of the pictures appear to be decimated landscapes, some to be in the outer reaches of deep space or in the depths of the oceans searching, possibly in vain, for a habitable home. Their intimate size invites the viewer to step in, to really look at the details and feel the artist’s apprehensions around the future.