January 2, 2025
Nancy Macko
Decompositions: Photography
Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps College
October 5, 2024 - January 12, 2025
Nancy Macko
During Covid, many people began strange rituals. The unknown, the isolation, the mandate to stay at home affected people in different ways. Because she could not travel, photographer Nancy Macko created her own fantasy world that to visit on a regular basis. Contained within her compost bin were a host of colors and textures, as well as the occasional maggot or other insects drawn to the decay. Using a close focus lens, Macko began to document the interplay of these elements. Rather than looking down, she shot through the plastic sides of the bin. The resulting evocative and uncanny images not only reproduce the disintegration of forms, but also record the atmospheric residue.
The theoretical references within the work stem from Michel Foucault. Whereas the art historical references range from William Henry Fox Talbot and Carleton Watkins' images of plants and vegetables to Edward Weston's seductive peppers. There are nods to Dutch Still Life painting, Surrealism, Archimboldo's personifications, as well as associations (for me) with Peter Greenaway's A Zed & Two Noughts (1985), a film that graphically depicts the character's obsession with decay.
The thirty-eight color photographs are a range of sizes and orientations: some of the larger images are even placed on brightly colored free standing walls. Numerous quotes by Foucault from his seminal work The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences are also placed on these walls alongside the images to direct the way the pictures are interpreted. It is also possible to indulge in their beauty and to admire them in formal ways.
The works realistically and metaphorically explore time, transformation, loss, regeneration, fragility and the cyclical aspects of nature. The large horizontal image Asparagus Kindling (2020) hangs alone on a magenta wall. Two stalks of asparagus fall to the left and right of a vertical stem suggesting fallen trees or logs. Moldy green-blue semi-translucent leaves with different shades of black and brown surround the stalks. Within the mix are what could be onion skins, as well as a disintegrating reddish orb that supports one of the pieces of asparagus. Streaks of condensation cascade down the image to reiterate the fact that the photograph was shot through a wall of plastic.
Many of these luscious photographs are reminiscent of underwater scenes or sci-fi landscapes at once familiar and utterly foreign. For example, in the aptly titled The Light in the Creek (2020), a discarded stem with delicate green branches leans from left to right toward the center of the composition. It is superimposed over other colorful and intricately shaped plant fragments forming what could be seen as a receding horizon. In the center of Vigil (2022) is an insect — a living creature — and a reminder that death and life are intricately bound.
Macko's images are wonderfully layered and filled with light and shadow. This is evident in Lemonthyme Jungle (2021). Here, translucent branches, stems and rinds float within a light blue background to meld with one another within an ambiguous setting. In White Dragon (2022), a white cylindrical shape topped with what appears to resemble a headdress emerges from an orange blob that floats in front of pink and white debris. Macko's dragon is a wobbly creature neither menacing nor threatening as it is subsumed into a dark void.
Macko's photographs are created using a close focus lens. The images depict collapsed spaces of muted colors. These disconcerting scenes are filled with chance juxtapositions. While the integrity of the compost remains, some pictures become evocative still lives and landscapes, while in others, Macko allows for maximum abstraction.
Decompositions: Photography
Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps College
October 5, 2024 - January 12, 2025
Nancy Macko
During Covid, many people began strange rituals. The unknown, the isolation, the mandate to stay at home affected people in different ways. Because she could not travel, photographer Nancy Macko created her own fantasy world that to visit on a regular basis. Contained within her compost bin were a host of colors and textures, as well as the occasional maggot or other insects drawn to the decay. Using a close focus lens, Macko began to document the interplay of these elements. Rather than looking down, she shot through the plastic sides of the bin. The resulting evocative and uncanny images not only reproduce the disintegration of forms, but also record the atmospheric residue.
The theoretical references within the work stem from Michel Foucault. Whereas the art historical references range from William Henry Fox Talbot and Carleton Watkins' images of plants and vegetables to Edward Weston's seductive peppers. There are nods to Dutch Still Life painting, Surrealism, Archimboldo's personifications, as well as associations (for me) with Peter Greenaway's A Zed & Two Noughts (1985), a film that graphically depicts the character's obsession with decay.
The thirty-eight color photographs are a range of sizes and orientations: some of the larger images are even placed on brightly colored free standing walls. Numerous quotes by Foucault from his seminal work The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences are also placed on these walls alongside the images to direct the way the pictures are interpreted. It is also possible to indulge in their beauty and to admire them in formal ways.
The works realistically and metaphorically explore time, transformation, loss, regeneration, fragility and the cyclical aspects of nature. The large horizontal image Asparagus Kindling (2020) hangs alone on a magenta wall. Two stalks of asparagus fall to the left and right of a vertical stem suggesting fallen trees or logs. Moldy green-blue semi-translucent leaves with different shades of black and brown surround the stalks. Within the mix are what could be onion skins, as well as a disintegrating reddish orb that supports one of the pieces of asparagus. Streaks of condensation cascade down the image to reiterate the fact that the photograph was shot through a wall of plastic.
Many of these luscious photographs are reminiscent of underwater scenes or sci-fi landscapes at once familiar and utterly foreign. For example, in the aptly titled The Light in the Creek (2020), a discarded stem with delicate green branches leans from left to right toward the center of the composition. It is superimposed over other colorful and intricately shaped plant fragments forming what could be seen as a receding horizon. In the center of Vigil (2022) is an insect — a living creature — and a reminder that death and life are intricately bound.
Macko's images are wonderfully layered and filled with light and shadow. This is evident in Lemonthyme Jungle (2021). Here, translucent branches, stems and rinds float within a light blue background to meld with one another within an ambiguous setting. In White Dragon (2022), a white cylindrical shape topped with what appears to resemble a headdress emerges from an orange blob that floats in front of pink and white debris. Macko's dragon is a wobbly creature neither menacing nor threatening as it is subsumed into a dark void.
Macko's photographs are created using a close focus lens. The images depict collapsed spaces of muted colors. These disconcerting scenes are filled with chance juxtapositions. While the integrity of the compost remains, some pictures become evocative still lives and landscapes, while in others, Macko allows for maximum abstraction.