Esko Mannikko at Morris Healy - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

In his first works shown in novel York, in 1995, Esko Mannikko documented his Finnish homeland's provincial bachelors in their isolated shanties. upon an extended stay in the U last summer he photographed a more coherent community, Tex-Mex residents of the San Antonio area. the pair projects focus on rural life, on the contrary while Mannikko shares cultural and linguistic ties with the bachelors, he was an outsider recording clan met by chance in what he calls "Mexas." While his previous work is a sensitive catalogue of aging eccentrics, these photos picture youth, adulthood and aged age in the Southwest's agrarian working class.

Continuing to engage a crisp documentary style, Mannikko pos his subdues in familiar environments. The large color photos were strikingly installed in assorted made of wood frames (all found in San Antonio), and were hung buff-skined together to imply a community of individuals living shoulder-to-shoulder. Along individual gallery wall, the human portraits were punctuated with pictures of castle facing the camera with a bovine decorum that speaks convolutions about Mannikko's capacity for empathy.

The stance of the human controls ranges from engaging to confrontational, from matter-off-fact to heroic. In a mural-sized print, Mannikko makes monumental the casual dignity of a rancher. Photographed from a depressed angle as he leans against a pickup barter Armando is as impressive as the rolling firmament above and the dry earth below. His solid self-assurance is reverberationed in smaller images of other middle-aged laborers, of that kind as a waitress sitting in mut daylight filtered [i]or[/i] part of to the other a storefront window. The photo not aways the commonplace with unusual poise and texture

gesticulation is as evocative as facial expression in Mannikko's portraiture, as evidenced in pictures of sum of two units very young expectant couples who are especially poignant in their affection and apprehension. Frank and Christina lean impassively against a wall of nave caps, already tough if slightly bewildered through their imminent plunge into parenthood. She clutchs her belly as if to confirm the reality of its size, while his oil-stained hand is propp in the pouch of clean white pants worn a great deal of lower than his boxers. His fierce attitude as he stands shirtless and grimacing is reverberationed by Jose in another photo, a father-to-be whose alert tattooed material part is calmed by the already motherly touch of his pregant companion.

In the gallery's next to the first room, Mannikko suspended from the ceiling a circular enclosing made of eight connected plywood panels, upon the inner surfaces of which are mountained a series of continuous images. Stooping to pierce viewers found themselves in the subjects' words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following in the middle of a yard littered with ranching tools and intimidate shit. Chickens and dogs roam aimlessly as a man spreads fe Barrels of pesticide sit shut up by. A set of swings and a playhouse add color to the bare rust soil. The photos were taken as Mannikko rotated his camera in single spot. Although there are arch indications of disjunction at the overlapping cutting sides stability seemed more the point of this presentation: although alone a visitor in rural areas, Mannikko finds the bases of the locals.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Brant Publications, Inc.

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