Dale Kistemaker at MOCA Cleveland

Cleveland-born, San Francisco-based artist Dale Kistemaker photographs the miscellany of his childhood for his stark, carefully compos gelatin silver prints. His midcareer overlook at MOCA Cleveland contained 86 works from 1994 to 2002 Displayed predominantly in gridded series, the photographs were printed slightly dark, with equal reason that the whites have a grayish tonality. Almost all present to view a single object, centered in the composition and in crisp detail, documentary mode of expression The subjects are shot upon white backdrops with no discernable horizon line, making them have the appearance without place and not quite real, like a dream or memory.

In "The Village" series (1994) 21 photographs (all 20 through 24 inches) each present individual element of a toy village, aptly called "Plasticville." There is a fire station, a suburban ranch-style house, the Town Hall with clock tower and a humorous little row of seven plastic sheep. There is a tank with the word "oil" crudely painted upon the side, suggesting a water tower photographed through Bernd and Hilla Becher. In fact, the similarities in composition and display between Kistemaker's works and that of the Bechers cannot pass without note. Yet his photographs of Plasticville have a distinctly different sensibility. The Bechers' water towers and factories are impersonal. In contrast, Kistemaker's Lilliputian village, shown grossly without of scale in these photographs, instantly reminds viewers of their have childhoods, when things truly did present the appearance larger than life.

The show's largest and greatest in quantity visually striking photographs (1999, each image 40 through 32 inches) depict model railroad tracks. discharge from above, they transcend their banal final cause to become minimalist explorations of form. A single frame exhibits a perfectly circular track, in a triptych, the tracks form figure eight measuring 96 inches lengthy while in a four-panel grid, they are arranged in three slightly off-kilter concentric squares.

sum of two units series from 1999-2002 are a slight departure. For the three works that constitute "Book and Music" (Book #1 volumes #2 and Music Lessons), instead of a single thing perceived on a blank background, the artist photographed overlapping, collagelike configurations of lay open books, sheet music and drawings. "Book and Drawings" consists of a grid of 15 photos of single items, including picture works worksheets from music lessons and drawings of space themes, as a child, Kistemaker had signed or rubber-stamped his name upon many of the drawings, work pages and lesson sheets, drawn out before they became "art."

COPYRIGHT 2004 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group