Press Clippings |
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ArtSake "Lana Z. Caplan’s Illusions at Gallery NAGA" |
Lana Z. Caplan’s Illusions at Gallery NAGA Lana Z. Caplan is interested in the ways that women’s social identities can be comprised of at-odds imagery and expectations. As she says in an interview on the Gallery NAGA website: “in the third wave of feminism, we’re expected to be individualistic and successful, to be able to do it all, have a family, relationships, time for ourselves, to be sexy and sexually liberated. All of these roles conflict.” Lana, who has been making fascinating film, video, and photographic art in the Boston area since 1990, has a one-woman exhibition of new works exploring those conflicting roles at Gallery NAGA through February 27, 2010. Notes for Future Illusions invites viewers to experience videos that, taken together, make up a cohesive installation exploring the perspectives of the spectator and the inspected, and the contradictory icons of womanhood. Viewers can drift from a video set up in front of a 70s pleather couch, to captivating projected images shot in the Mediterranean, to a “park bench” piece, to videos with headphone stations, and more. An admiring Boston Globe write-up of the exhibition called PORTRAIT (first still from the top) a “funny elucidation of the awkward self-awareness of people sitting for a portrait.” Lana Z. Caplan is a film/videomaker, photographer and installation artist who splits her time between Boston, MA and the Amalfi Coast of Italy. She was recently awarded an ongoing residency at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, to support the documentary she is making about international women who have emigrated to Italy to marry Italian men. |
The Boston Globe "Galleries: Circles of Women" |
Circles of women “Sanctimonia 1’’ and “Sanctimonia 2’’ positions a video of pop star Madonna gyrating onstage beside a video of men shouldering a statue of the Madonna and child - hardly a new comparison, even if you’re looking at the role of the audience (or worshipers) - in the iconography of both Madonnas. On the other hand, “Portrait,’’ which follows the sometimes salty conversation of elderly Italian women as they note that they are being videotaped, is a funny elucidation of the awkward self-awareness of people sitting for a portrait. Watching and knowingly being watched are juicy topics, but difficult to explore when women and sexuality are central to the discussion, just because imagery of women being watched (or objectified) is everywhere. |
Compass Rose "Making Things Happen: An Interview with Lana Z Caplan" |
Making Things Happen: An Interview with Lana Z Caplan Lana Z. Caplan, a Boston-based film/videomaker, photographer and installation artist, visited Chester College of New England this week as part of the Visiting Artist’s Symposium Lecture Series. Caplan works with super8, found footage, video, interactive projections, and alterative processes photography in her pieces, which explore relationships, mortality and social issues. Caplan grew up in a world of photography. When given her first Polaroid at the age of four, it was just a natural progression for a family that took regular snapshots. Although she never considered a career in art growing up, she attended numerous workshops and camps. It wasn’t until her undergraduate work in art history that she learned anyone can be an artist, if you work hard and make art. When preparing for a new piece, Caplan said she starts with a concept and focuses on finding what the best ways to communicate that, be it through sketches or details within the environment or what works best with the site. Through her heavy use of Polaroids she can see what’s happening, and make decisions as she goes. Armed with research, her camera, and a willingness to experiment, she starts with an idea and keeps kicking it around until figuring out how to approach it. Caplan’s varied portfolio includes pieces that are experienced, not just viewed. From her videos Love in the Afternoon, and The Waltz to her series on Sites of Public Execution, Caplan’s pieces cover a wide range of compositional interest. “I hope that my audience will give [the work] the time to try to understand, and to see the multiple layers and pieces that make it, as well as the collective meaning of the pieces put in the installation,” she said. Between exhibiting, studio time, researching and more, Caplan still finds time to visit many colleges as a traveling artist/lecturer. She said her biggest piece of advice is to work hard. “Nothing comes easy, so keep working at it,” she said. “Take a good look at what came before you and the context of what you are doing, what you might be referencing and what others might be seeing when they view your work.” Caplan encourages young artists to look for inspiration everywhere. She has found it in the work of Pipilotti Rist and Andy Warhols’ films. “We can all be inspired by something,” she said. “Look at other artists and see what works or what doesn’t work for you and what you can take away from it to incorporate into your own work.” Even with inspiration, Caplan joked that a typical day in the studio consists of “cappuccino and email.” On a more serious note, she did have one suggestion to beat procrastination. “On those days you are not in the studio, keep a running list of the things to do next time in the studio and options for those times you just don’t feel like ‘it,’” she said. When work is ready to be shown, Caplan suggested thinking broadly about exhibiting. “Create your own opportunities,” she said. “Collaborate with other types artists and make your own events. Hire bands, invite friends, create your own scenes, work out the kinks. Don’t rely on the existing infrastructure –be prepared to show the establishment. By bringing people together things happen.”
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Mt. Greylock News "DownStreet Art features Video Lounge" |
DownStreet Art features Video Lounge http://newshare.typepad.com/greylocknews/2009/06/downstreet-art-features-video-lounge.html |
North Adams Transcript "Artists show their drive" |
NORTH ADAMS -- Settled into the back corner of MCLA Gallery 51, Lana Z Caplan, a Boston-based artist, quickly changed the reels of film on a large 16 millimeter film projector Friday, as the artists around her cut, glued, painted, sewed and sketched. They were working non-stop as part of a 100-hour collage marathon that ends tonight. "I'm not sure at this point what will come to fruition, but I'm thinking I'll have a sweet little love poem by the time I'm done," Caplan said. "I'm using this 16 millimeter film footage, which I'm going to collage into my own film." Caplan, who participated in the gallery's original "100 Hours in the Woodshed" in 2007, said she was excited to be asked back for "Woodshed II: Another 100 hours," which began Thursday evening and will culminate with a month long show at Gallery 51. An opening reception to celebrate the work of the 40 artists participating in the event will take place at the gallery from 5 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday. "It was a really great experience last time," Caplan said. "It's one of my favorite art-making experiences. There's great energy and great people in a great place. You're also seeing old friends. In the last two years, there have been two babies born, two engagements and one marriage amongst those of us who've returned. A lot can happen in two years. (...) Over the last four days, visitors have been able to walk through the "live studios" at Gallery 51 and the MCLA Gallery 51 annex on the corner of Main and Holden streets, and witness art-making in progress.According to Jonathan Secor, MCLA director of special programs, the premise of the event is to arrive with nothing and at the end of the 100 hours have created work that will be on display and for sale at the gallery. Local artist Daniel "Danny O" O'Connor originally proposed the idea of holding a "collage party" to Secor after attending one at the ZieherSmith Gallery in New York City's Chelsea art district during the summer of 2006. As part of the show, artists created their pieces for the exhibit in the gallery, which was open to the public for the 100 hours they had to make the artwork." (...) |
Berkshire Eagle
January 18, 2009 "In the woodshed"
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Dozens of artists make the most of cabin fever in North Adams. Having come from around the corner and from across the country, since Thursday night these artists have been part of "Woodshed II: The Next Hundred Hours," a five-day gathering to churn out collage art together. The first woodshed happened two years ago with 20 artists. Spirit of collaboration Afterwards, the Woodshed work will be curated and the selected works will be part of a Woodshed exhibition at MCLA Gallery 51. Mark Hohlstein of Great Barrington and Shane Murray of New York City were working together on a four-foot by four-foot two-dimensional collage using hundreds of pieces of magazine and newspaper to craft an image. Their hope is to have it completed by the time Woodshed ends Monday night. Jason Brinkerhoff of San Francisco stood over a table covered with scraps of paper carrying fragments of images. "I finally got just enough chaos in front of me to make something happen," he said. "It took me a few days to build up to it." Brinkerhoff said he likes the close quarters and working in a public space. "It makes you accountable to other artists — you're not hiding in your studio," he said. "It's a pretty organic process," added Scott Zieher of New York City from across the table. "If I can lay something down on paper and call it finished I'll be happy. It is fun and everybody's got a great attitude, but that's not what it's about. It's about getting some work done." 'Beauty of being here" She was part of the first Woodshed. "That's the beauty of being here — last time I made some pieces that are still some of my favorites," Caplan said. "So my hope is that I'll be able to make something that I like in two years." |
BU Today Online May 22, 2008 "War, Family, and Work on Display at PRC" |
War, Family, and Work on Display at PRC Click on the slide show above to see images from EXPOSURE and to hear Lana Z. Caplan, Claire Beckett, and Cree Bruins talk about their work. Conflict, community, and commerce are all featured themes in EXPOSURE: The Annual Photographic Resource Center Juried Exhibition, which opens Thursday, May 22, at 5:30 p.m. While juried shows often display single works from many photographers, the work in EXPOSURE is from just 14 artists — chosen by guest juror Lesley A. Martin, publisher of Aperture Foundation's book program — who will exhibit more than 40 images. “The really great thing about this show is there’ll be more than one piece from each artist's body of work,” says Lana Z. Caplan, who is showing four photographs from her series exploring sites of public execution around the world. Pieces in the show focus on family, such as Mariliana Arvelo’s photographs of her grandmother, Martine Fougeron’s images of her two sons, and Molly Landreth’s exploration of same-sex couples. Other photographers turn their lenses on war. Claire Beckett gained access to military training spaces in the United States for her series Simulating Iraq. Ellen Susan sets up portraits of soldiers, using a historical wet plate process to achieve a grainy look. Benjamin Lowry climbed inside an army Humvee to capture moments in Iraq through the window. Marta Labad crumples up famous historical war images and photographs them. Other featured works include the abstract photography of Cree Bruins and Talie Chetrit and the consumer critiques of Clint Baclawski, Eric Percher, and Erik Schubert. |
South End News November 22, 2007 "Whose line is it?" |
20 artists showcased in Mills Gallery exhibition. (...) Another highlight is Lana Z Caplan's Thinking of You, a looped five-minute video of character sketches. The installation displays a series of penciled headshots. Grainy videotape quality, stop-motion editing, and pulsating lights lend the eerie quality of a comic book snuff film. Each sketched face is accompanied by a revelatory statement of character: "He is irritatingly pleasant," reads one. "She believes she's forgotten," says another. "He has trouble looking her in the eyes." reveals a third. Whether the handful of misspellings (including "helmut," "creul," and "aprehension,") are the result of creative license or a hasty spellcheck is up for debate. But gallery visitors are sure to agree on the shrewd, haunting nature of the piece. ... |
North Adams Transcript June 21, 2007 "Old technology creates modern visions" |
Thursday, June 21 NORTH ADAMS — In a
variation of the words of philosopher Marshall McLuhan, photographer
Lana Z. Caplan's work shows that the medium is at least a portion
of the message, as is the process attached to the chosen medium.
Caplan's work runs a gamut of alternative processes of photography,
taking advantage of the aesthetics related to each in order to
explore the themes that interest her, as well as the methods
of production. One area of photographic labor for Caplan as been
in
the production of tintypes, a style of photography popular at
the end of the 19th century that employs black metal and negative
images
to create the finished product. Caplan was as drawn to the potential
flaws of the medium as she was to the colors and texture. For some of her films, she uses the same props
as in her photographic work. Even if she hasn't, she has come to
find the different
methods she uses as multiple
means to the same expressions. They all spring from the same brain. "
The subject matter of the work is the same, because I'm thinking
about the same things," said Caplan, "I'm just using
different tools to examine the same subjects." |
North Adams Transcript January 30, 2007 "Mixing it up |
Artists have been working since Friday to fill Gallery 51 in North Adams with their works during the '100 Hours in the Woodshed' event. NORTH ADAMS — Among the scraps of magazine
pages, old cups of coffee and discarded Papa Gino's pizza boxes,
16 artists cut, pasted, sewed and spliced as they raced against
the clock Monday afternoon during the final hours of the "100
Hours" art marathon held at Gallery 51.
(...) Lana Z. Caplan of Boston was in the final stages of editing together vintage movie trailers — creating short videos that explore the topic of relationships. " I've made a one-minute romance made from the trailers and another that explores relationships through a lion and tiger fight," she said. "I want people to take away the idea that some relationships are more complicated than others — and as equally as heated. In the film, you can see (the lion and tiger) are clearly not trying to maim each other, they're playing. It's like some more complicated relationships." Caplan also created an abstract film collage with the optical sound strips from the lion and tiger fight scenes. "You're looking at the sound, but it's silent," she said. "It's the sound of the lion, tiger and the fight, yet it's silent. I'm thinking of titling it 'Roar.' " (...) |
American
Photo On Campus September 2004
”Tin Woman: Lana Z Caplan Finds New Meaning in an Old Photographic Process." by Nina Gantcheva |
For Lana Z Caplan, alternative and antique photo processes are more than a way to give her images distinctive look. "I want to conceptualize themes that run throughout generations and time periods," says the photographer. Though she has explored both cyanotype and palladium printing, much of Caplan's work involves variations on the tintype - a process that has taken on political significance for the photographer. She points out that Civil War soldiers often had tintype portraits made to send home to loved ones, and that she began to create hers around the time of the American invasion of Iraq. "Both were, and are, times of polarization in our country, " she explains. (...) "All the images have an underlying text or narrative that is both personal and has universal symbolism," says Caplan. "some of them will conjure recognizable iconography." The pear, for example, evokes both sustenance and a female shape, and the torn strips of bedsheets used to suspend it suggest "things are bound and not serving their purpose," says Caplan. The sea horse images challenges notions of gender because males of the species bear its young. Caplan sums things up this way on her website: "In all of my work, I am examining the beauty and tension in decay, the rhythmic cycles in nature, and the societal emotions that surround the fleeting, dying and everyday reality of living." |
The Boston
Herald "Old techniques give focus to photos" |
Day after day, Lana Z Caplan watched death overtake the orchid sitting by the window of her Roxbury studio. Slowly, inexorably, the stalk lost one blossom, then another, then another, until all that remained was a bare stick in a vase. Faced with graphic evidence of life's transience, Caplan did what she is most comfortable doing: She turned it into art. "20 Days in December," a grid of 20 small images, records the orchid's metamorphosis in the antique, velvety tones of a palladium print. Why would a lively 30-year-old photographer employ methods that flourished in the 19th century? "I've always focused on a similar conceptual theme: the experience of existence," Caplan said, adding that this concern is "best portrayed with older techniques that remind viewers of historic images and are therefore free of popular culture associations." On a sweltering June morning, the artist looked surprisingly cool, dressed in a black sleeveless shirt, black capri pants and old-fashioned blue sneakers, with her blond hair hanging loose over her shoulders. She lucked out in finding a parking space near Gallery NAGA, where her debut solo show is on view. "Lana Z Caplan: Photograms, Palladium Prints and Tintypes" displays a remarkably coherent vision, as the photographer probes the form and the nature of living things in a variety of media. Only the tiny Polaroid transfers on glass represent a modern technique, but even these have the feel of something rescued from a long-lost archive. As a child in Pennsylvania and later New Jersey, Caplan always liked to take pictures. She also liked collecting things. She would capture lightning bugs long enough to see the light blink before letting them go. She would nurture abandoned birds' eggs until the babies could fly away. When she and her older sister gathered berries, they would mash them and make secret potions. Initially, the artist concentrated on painting and ceramics, two media that involve a lot of hands-on activity. Gradually, she veered toward photography in her undergraduate years at Boston University and afterward when studying at the Massachusetts College of Art and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. She felt drawn to historical processes because they allowed her to create the image during the printing process. Instead of pressing a button, she slathered chemicals on paper, placed objects on light-sensitive paper, painted coatings onto metal plates and waited patiently for the mixtures to air-dry. "It's an all-day process to get that one moment," she said. Time's effects are a powerful presence in Caplan's art. Although her images are all still shots, the artist heightens the fleeting quality of the moments she has preserved. She has arranged bees among the petals of the photogram "Quarry Flowers," and crab legs within the stalks of "Lisianthus." While echoing the forms within each plant type, these unusual additions also serve as a reminder of the universality of brief life spans. "I like the integration between the two elements," the photographer said of these strange hybrids. "They show a similarity in form. They show we all share structural as well as experiential elements." Looking at her own work, the lifelong collector pointed to a skate egg sac that never developed, crab molts that have been shed, crab legs left after the creature died, cut flowers destined to fade quickly. A bunch of tulips dangles from cloth bandages in one haunting tintype. Caplan was listening to Nirvana when she made that image. Little ballerina dolls hang suspended in another tintype. Back in her studio, Caplan recently experimented with wrapped and hanging locusts – at least until she dismantled the arrangement out of consideration for an overnight guest. Are these bandaged items wounded? Healing? Bound in restraints? Caplan responded, "I like that there's the ambiguity. I like mystery, personal interpretation. I don't like it all spelled out." Lana Z Caplan exhibition, at Gallery NAGA, 67 Newbury St., Boston, through July 18. Free. 617-267-9060. Also showing at NAGA: "On Closer Inspection: Marks of Making in the Field." |
Weekly
Dig "Lana Z Caplan’s
Photograms, |
It’s ok to go into a gallery, even one on Newbury Street, sweaty from bike riding and wearing a grubby skirt – you don't need art school cred on your sleeve, or a matching hat and bag to prove you are there to buy. Arthur Dion, director of Gallery NAGA (located in that gothic church building on the corner of Berkeley and Newbury Streets), can’t contain his enthusiasm about their current show Photograms, Palladium Prints, and Tintypes by Lana Z Caplan. “We are so delighted to help launch her work!” he said, “ This is the debut of someone who is very interesting to us, a young artist whose work is technically strong and has intriguing content.” You might have seen Lana Z Caplan expertly snapping shots of performers at the Middle East and elsewhere… little did you know that she has also mastered historic photographic processes and absorbed their cultural resonance. “I like that it’s a much slower, hand manipulated process, much more thought out than 35mm click-click-click. Setting up the image, coating the plate with light sensitive material - it is like painting,” she says, “With the historic processes, like tintypes for instance, you can’t go into a store and buy it all prepared, you get the chemicals and the paper and then experiment. It took me awhile to figure out how to direct the imperfections.” Tintypes were first used in the US in 1856 and are made by coating iron (not tin, strangely enough) with a light sensitive collodion silver mixture, giving them a dark reflective otherworldly glow. Tintypes were common during the Civil War because, unlike other photographs which at the time were printed on glass, tintypes are rugged and durable and so soldiers could mail their portraits home to loved ones from the encampment. Caplan’s tintypes capture the power of the glowing eyes of a dead soldier but with imagery associated with traditional still-life which has been eroticized, challenged, brought to the brink: fleshy pears dangle, bound by frayed cloth criss-crossing their curves; a dragonfly, caught, hangs strung up by a human spider tendency. The 6 tintypes in the Dinner Settings series are framed by oval gold leaf and appear Victorian and formal until you look close enough to see that on each plate rests different detritus: Wellfleet horseshoe crab molts, Concord cat skull, North Adams sparrow skeleton. These pieces together are a beautiful shamanistic homage to places, time, life, death. “Tintypes are devoid of pop culture, modern society. The work I’ve been doing for the past five years has a lot to do with the struggle of existence, conflict, war, destruction, survival, and similarities between all life forms –the inherent beauty in that plant life, animal life, human life, all have the same experience of existence even within structure and form,” reflects Caplan. The Polaroid emulsion lift transfers on glass, the most modern process in the show, are also full of ceremonial reverence: animal skulls, again bound and dangling, next to upside down flowers like Paleolithic bird feet, recall some strange body submitted to ancient burial rites, while the shadow of the images passing through the fragile glass plate onto the wall conjures the spirit. Caplan’s photograms recall Chinese ink brush paintings, petals fading like trails of smoke, while x-rays capture the delicate wisps deep inside buds yet to bloom. The platinum/palladium prints depict the slow decay of an orchid over 20 days. “I chose palladium printing, a 19th century process, for this subject because it has a very precious quality,” says Caplan, “and visually the texture is velvety, like orchid petals. It is very expensive, pristine, the most archival, the most permanent, perfect for re-presenting the precious impermanence of daily life.” And while you are there at Gallery NAGA, check out a must-see painting by Masako Kamiya called Dragonfly Hunting: tiny pin-head stalagmites of gouache cover a panel in buzzing frenetic loops and darts, orange, green, yellow, red, layers like radioactive sediment. |
The
Boston Globe Living Arts |
Lana Z Caplan has her first solo show at Gallery NAGA. She's just 30, but already a jack-of-all-trades in photography: The show includes tintypes, palladium prints, Polaroid transfers on glass, and photograms, which are images made when you lay objects directly on light-sensitive film or paper. Caplan's a painterly photographer, and the different processes give her an opportunity to use emulsion, chemicals, and even ink to create atmosphere in her images. She takes the natural world as her theme: "20 Days in December" features a grid of 20 small black-and-white prints documenting the bloom and death of an orchid. The photograms, which show up as inky shadows on white paper, conflate different elements of nature. "Lisianthus" appends a dying stalk on the top of a thriving flower. The moody, gray-green tones of the tintypes work well for her life-on-the-edge-of-death ideas. "Dragonfly" portrays that insect trapped in a glass jar, which is suspended by torn fabric. (...) |
| Gallery
NAGA press release May, 2003 |
LANA Z CAPLAN: Photograms,
Palladium Prints, and Tintypes | ON CLOSER INSPECTION: Elizabeth Cheek, Bronlyn Jones, Masako Kamiya, Agnes Martin, David Moore, James Siena May 30 – July 18, 2003 at Gallery NAGA
Lana Z Caplan: Photograms, Palladium Prints, and Tintypes and On Closer Inspection: Marks of Making in the Field both run from May 30 through July 18. A reception for the artists and the public will be held at the gallery on Friday, May 30 from 6 to 8 pm. In addition, Lana Z Caplan will speak about her work on Saturday, June 7 at 2 pm. Lana Z Caplan is a Boston-based multimedia artist who has done extensive work with historic photographic processes. All of her work in this exhibition has been made in ways originated in the nineteenth century. (Specific descriptions of the history and chemistry of the techniques is available from the gallery.) Caplan’s various technical approaches to making images are unified by her thematic concerns, which revolve around the life, death, and decay of living things. In some works – as in her progressive palladium prints of blossoming orchids, shot daily as the lush flowers weaken and eventually drop their petals – this theme is evident. In other works, for example in her stately black-and-white photography of wildflowers into which she has unobtrusively inserted such detritus of death as bones and dead bugs, it’s implicit. Concentrating on the fleeting nature of existence, Caplan’s works make a strong case for photography’s ability to preserve transient glories. In the luscious tonal undulations of emulsion she’s spread onto metal plates with her and in the delicate graduations of grey made by light passing through blossoms, the work emphasizes beauty’s fragility. In a statement she’s written, Caplan says, “I am focusing on how all living things are somehow similar at all stages of existence and the beauty and horror that lies within these affinities.” In presenting On Closer Inspection: Marks of Making in the Field, the gallery suggests that some minimal work is best understood if the subtle evidence of the work’s execution – sometimes noticeable only with scrutiny – is seen as gestures which inflect its structure. The paintings and prints in the show generally have clear grid or geometric forms that define their appearance from a normal viewing distance; from up close, however, one sees the marks the artist’s hand made in constructing these larger patterns. Elizabeth Cheek, Bronlyn Jones, Masako Kamiya, and David Moore are Boston-based painters for whom, respectively, tiny drawn lines, or slight irregularities of painted forms, or daubs of paint atop one another, or thin slices into the paint’s surface give their paintings’ faces lines of personality and experience. James Siena is a New York-based painter and printmaker whose strongly patterned black-and-white etching can be seen to build from thousands of tiny cross-hatchings. Agnes Martin, arguably the most important minimal painter, is represented here by an untitled 1998 lithograph, whose geometric pattern is occupied by a delicate haze that barely floats in its space. |
The
Boston Globe Living Arts
|
ABERRANT BEHAVIOR "Between Evolution and Aberration: Works of Imaginary Anatomy" at the Fort Point Point Arts Community Gallery has a similar agenda.(...) Here, it's all about mutation. Lana Z Caplan (...) makes luminous black-and-white photos of plants that appear to be naturally developing unlikely features, such as goldenrod with dragonfly wings. (...) |
The
Boston Sunday Globe Living Arts |
MAKING THE SCENE ONCE MORE (...) Before the padlocks click shut on this Fort Point institution, the Revolving Musuem offers one more show. It will be experimental of course. It was the local artist Jeff Smith who came up with the idea for "The Experiment Show." He and co curator Ana Crowley, 28, were brainstorming on ways to create an interactive show – one that would get art fans participating in and with the exhibits. so Smith dreamed up the experiment concept: Artist would create pieces of art, as well as hypotheses about how audience members would react to them. then, as in any good science experiment, those hypotheses would be tested, conclusions reached, and results posted.(...) Then there's Lana Z caplan's piece, which funnels people into a 20-foot-long, curtained hallway where they are exposed to a variety of provocative photographs. As the stop o each, viewers will be asked to choose one word that best describes the image. Caplan predicts that the men will tend to use nouns. Women, she thinks will probably invoke adjectives.(...) |
The
Boston Globe Living Arts |
HEADING EAST "Works of an Eastern Nature" at Media Gallery starts with he prints and sculptures of Shannon Goff, who has studied Japanese woodblock printing in Japan, and follows it up with artists who have a bent toward the Far East. (...) Lana Caplan's photos read like Calligraphy, with shadows and silhouettes of plants hinting at the delicately intangible.(...) |
Weekly
Dig "Recombining
DNA: Lana Z Caplan's art at SCAT" |
Lana Z Caplan's art is a matter of life and death, but not necessarily in the way you might think. In her printmaking, Caplan combines cut flora with parts of dead fauna and captures their silhouettes on creamy , light-sensitive paper. their lack of color allows visual confusion between, or merging of, objects. The products are X-rays of hybrid creatures, the imagines results of intriguing gene-grafting experiments. In the most successful of the works, whole animals are off shoots of plants: a sparrow grows as a night-blooming cirrus leaf; a bee emerges as a lady bell stamen; a moth blooms as a daisy flower. in others, animal parts mimic elements of plants: frog legs replace cosmos stamen, or crab legs stand in for Lisianthus leaves. In one striking mutation, an entirely new, horseshoe crab-like creature emerges with the body of a hosta leaf and a tail of vertebrae; one wonders if its resemblance to the prehistoric crustacean marks evolution or devolution. caplan's images are beautiful and at times unsettling. Her sophisticated consideration of the cycle of life and death is more evocative of Cronenberg's Fly than Frankenstein's monster. Ultimately, her work embraces renewal, not decay. |
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