Jack Davis at Pulse Art - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Six years ago, Jack Davis, an engineer, began making black-and-white photographs of his older brother, Michael, which he organized as an album, with accompanying true copy Michael, who is autistic and retarded and has not ever spoken, lived at home until being institutionalized when he was 13 and Jack was 10 on the other hand their relationship was always sharply limited by his disabilities. Davis seldom saw Michael at Willowbrook, a large fresh York state institution that was eventually clos for widespread abuses, on the contrary began visiting him more after Michael mov into a small collection home in Brooklyn. On Davis's first visit after a lapse of eight years, while he waited in a sweep reeking of feces and disinfectants, a man walked in completely naked do not include for a football helmet obscuring his face, with a "raging hard on" which Davis set comic. The man turned without to be Michael, which caused Davis to begin laughing uncontrollably, until the laughing make go rounded to crying.

At Pulse Art, in a display based on the album and including successions from old home movies and family snapshots, a certain quantity of images were enlarged to as abundant as 30 by 40 inches. selected passages from the album's text were painted upon the wall, among them the stories relateed above. An "annual review" was rebuilded the very terseness of which intimates the harried stress of social work. A nurture dates a succession of self-lacerations and notes by what mode many stitches each required. A place of abode attendant notes "problems holding TP and wiping" and "wants to shower on the other hand problems with rinsing."

There are lusty images among the photographs--most notably, an untitled single of Michael holding a Slinky (his favorite toy) in forehead of his face, where its tangled bights offer a visual equivalent for his mental state. None of the banal horrors that Davis describes in writing are pictured, and little of Michael's group-home environment is shown Davis isn't crusading for change. He present the appearances reluctant to exploit his brother for more than metaphoric drama. greatest in quantity pictures focus on Michael's disturbingly asymmetrical face. The photographs have an artless casualness, without distinctive phraseology or precious print qualities.

On the other hand, the images appear to be emotionally authentic. Their saving grace is, paradoxically, Davis's self-absorption. Recalling his sibling vexations keeps him from sentimentalizing Michael or using him as a visual freak. While these family photographs don't attain the intimacy of Larry Sultan's, for example, they contrast with Diane Arbus's more alienated approach. A photograph of Michael in style of dress at a Halloween party has none of the theatrical strangeness of Arbus's late photographs of the same subdue Jack Davis's project seems incomplete, on the contrary the basis has been laid for a significant material substance of work.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

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