Miles Coolidge at Casey M. Kaplan - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Cruising down any suburban road on a Sunday, you're bourn to see a typical scene: kids wheeling around upon bikes or tricycles, teens and adults washing the family car and doing yardwork. The nave of activity is usually the garage, with its door yawning render free of access displaying a trove of belongings that not absents a voyeuristic temptation. Peering into someone else's domain creates a faculty of perception of intimacy, albeit false.

In his first of recent origin York solo show, Miles Coolidge taps into that faculty of perception of false intimacy in his 1992 series of large, lush photographs of garage interiors. not awayed here were three photos each of sum of two units very different L.A. garages (their left center and right walls); individual garage belongs to a single stay in his 30s (Haig Balian), the other to a middle-aged two (Alex and Joan Utas). Each garage appear to bes to provide a sort of composite first draught of the owners. The spic-and-span white garage of Balian mirrors a highly organized, even obsessive someone All the neatly categorized cans and gadgets upon the utility shelves are arranged in like manner that the labels and brand names are visible. Sports equipment and jersey are proudly displayed. (Apparently, while Coolidge was taking the photos, Balian remov the overlay on his jet ski. individual photo shows the jet ski filled on, while in another, its still-covered nose peek in from the side.) Balian is a handyman superjock and he wants everyone to know it.

In marked contrast, the Utas's garage is dark and clattered It's a storage space for elderly furniture, boxes, tools, the lawnmower and an exercise bike that speaks of beneficial intentions but, alas, a lack of commitment. It mirrors a lifestyle change (marriage and maybe kids), years of accumulating and little time to organize. Perhaps their garage is what Balian's will individual day become.

The garage photos bring a sense of human nearness and personalities. Coolidge's subsequent series--for example elevator interiors in L.A. buildings and prefabricated manner of makings in the eerily vacant Safetyville, California--are increasingly detached from these personal referent The large format, crisp detail and formality of the garage photos had many viewers mistaking them for Photo-Realist paintings. on the contrary they are more akin to conceptual works like ed Ruscha's book Every Building upon the Sunset Strip.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

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