Collective loss: another visual register of unavoidable thoughts .
Our preoccupation as citizens of a society in crisis is reflected in almost every aspect of our life. We have questioned the professional, the economic, and the consequential, but have we had the time to explore a crisis’ emotional toll? Artist Leslie Gabaldon channels maturity and practicality within us as spectators and relentless participants of the arts and asks us to overcome the turmoil. And Let it go… Collective loss: another visual register of unavoidable thoughts, Gabaldon’s latest exhibition at Dot Fiftyone Gallery’s project room, encourages us to do just that: let it go. “Broken or unbalanced situations in our lives as adults make us children of a soundless war, orphans of our well being, neglected of our instant gratification and deprived from our emotional comfort.
How can we, as children, survive on our own?” she asks. The idea of parting with our damaged emotional belongings is not a comfortable one or an instinctual one, it is a self-inflicted pain that the artist feels is necessary for personal rebirth and individual survival. This practical existence is one that Gabaldon’s work radiates; there is a calming simplicity in each one of her pieces that is ever transmitting.
Broken toys, drowning objects, torn paper, and hidden bursts of color are protagonists in this series of ten photographs that reveal intimacy and confidence through objects in sharp focus, while other more faint images illustrate a melancholy state of mind as everything is blurry to a tearful eye.
Each photograph is the owner of a specific phrase that Gabaldon has chosen from a variety of songs, American idioms, and sentences of her own creation.
Although the pictures inspire personal and open interpretation, these hand picked phrases guide our individual understanding toward the more collective and unified goal of accepting and releasing, of “loss, isolation, abandonment and giving up,” she says.
This practical existence that Gabaldon encourages communicates to the spectator on an empathetic level: I have seen what you have seen, I have felt what you have felt, find the good in the small things, “And Let it go…”’
Equally impressive is the gallery’s production of Gabaldon’s vision by directors Isaac J. Perelman and Alfredo Guzman; the execution is as flawless as the artist’s message to her public with large light boxes and Plexiglas clipboards that play with the gallery’s natural light, making this exhibit beautifully clean and straight to the point.
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