Colter Jacobsen: Light Falls
Jack Hanley Gallery
San Francisco, CA
1-30 June 2007

by Tonya Warner

Colter Jacobsen is an artist after my own heart, in that he seems to share a fascination with found photos and all that comes along with the appropriation of discarded snapshots of strangers. From these abandoned photos, he creates “memory drawings” – pairs of meticulously and expertly rendered drawings where the first is based on the source photograph and the second is a memory of that image. Since he employs photos that document people and events he has no personal knowledge of, Jacobsen is therefore using his memory of the image itself and its formal qualities. It is a clever play on the relationship between memories and photographs (and a reminder of how over time photographs replace our actual remembrances of certain events). For the second drawing of the pair, Jacobsen occasionally reverses the image, emphasizing even further the image’s formal qualities.

In the press release, there is mention of how memories get “watered down,” a sentiment which is evident in a lot of the images – even though the source photographs are not shown, it is obvious which one is drawn from memory. The second image appears intentionally washed out, almost regrettably so. I think what this series of work shows is not the watering down of memory, but how memory is modified and mediated. I suppose this is a sticking point between concept and process – in Jacobsen’s work, images made from memories of the original are perhaps meant to stand as metaphors for memories of events and are aesthetically tweaked as such. These works are also a meditation (whether they want to be or not) on the duplicate and the unique, on how no two images can ever truly be the same.

The look of the show overall is very Lo-Fi, employing old book bindings or thrift store canvases, with some works backed by pages from old photo albums, their photos missing. Aesthetically, there is a strong likeness to Jamie Shovlin, especially the Naomi V. Jelish archive, however, it is uncertain Jacobsen is even aware of this.

Accompanying his “memory drawings” are images copied from other photographs and printed sources with typewritten text that loosely tells the story of “Bill.” There seem to be threads running though the quotes, but they do not connect to form a coherent narrative, nor do they relate to the images. This could be easily read as just another allusion to the disconnect between image and text, photo and caption, but somehow the execution keeps these works from seeming redundant. Jacobsen has such a nice eye for composition and draftsmanship that the show comes across as endearing and fascinating when it could just as easily have fallen quite flat.

http://www.jackhanley.com/
http://www.fecalface.com/calendar/calendar.php?mode=view&id=2854
http://www.esopusmag.com/archivesubright.php?Id=3129&pID=3123

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