Wyatt Gallery’s solo ongoing exhibition of cyanotype prints in part constitutes (among numerous other things) the challenge of unravelling several key personal and technical elements. For one, as the artist declares on his website, Wyatt Gallery happens to be “a person not a place.”
Also, and for the uninitiated, Gallery’s preferred medium for this exhibition, which runs at LOFTT Gallery in Woodbrook until October 4, is cyanotype print. First comes the photography, then the production of negative images, followed by the chemical transposing of these images on paper or fabric.
For Gallery’s Something Everywhere, there is heavy use of watercolour paper as the principal medium, but also both small and large prints on fabric.
At first glance, when entering the LOFTT Gallery, the chosen subjects—largely monochromatic concrete breeze blocks and electricity wires—appear in remarkably repetitious sequence around the walls of the space.
Look closer, though, and there are important nuances to be extracted from the twin factors of familiarity and vantage point. For Gallery, there is nothing overly contrived or unnatural. “I mean really they’re it’s just me either driving by them or walking by and I’m not really doing much artistic composition of it,” he says.
“It’s really just as I find it in that moment … we’re all driving under these wires and walking under them all the time and you see some with the poles where there’s just it seems like a million wires attached to one pole and how do they know which is which I don’t know.”
In this sense, Gallery’s art explores familiar themes, often taken for granted, through the vantage point of a non-native resident of 26 years. The “Philadelphian native”, as he describes himself on his website (www.wyattgallery.com) says he does not aim for too much metaphor in this exhibition.
“I love that kind of explosion of wires coming off the pole and really just putting it into this two-dimensional form and artwork … but I (am) not necessarily trying to find metaphor or any other meaning,” he says.
Then there are the ubiquitous breeze blocks; images of which have fertilised the work of artists such as Christopher Cozier who have seen in them broader meaning in the form of “ventilation”—presumably breathing space in the face of societal pressures.
For Gallery, who sees his “superpower” as being a function of being “both insider and outsider” images of the familiar create possibilities for identifying beauty. “(For) this whole exhibition it was me challenging myself to find the beauty in my everyday.”
“So, instead of driving to the north coast or driving to central and finding some beautiful landscapes to me it’s like where’s the beauty that exists right in front of me in the ordinary experience,” he says.
In the end, Something Everywhere is no “ordinary experience.” Through the eyes of a seasoned fine art photographer, there is much to dissect through images that strike familiar chords.
“I’m not by nature an optimistic person,” he confesses, “so pushing myself to find the beauty is me striving to be optimistic to be grateful for what I have and for what my daily life is about.”
So, yes, there are messages in the familiar. Motivation even: “I think a lot of us are always thinking about what we don’t have, what could be better … and so this project is me focusing on what is here and seeing the beauty in that as well as seeing the beauty in the mistakes and the imperfections that exist.”
Gallery has published four books and is in numerous public and private collections such as the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the George Eastman House, the Museum of The City of New York, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Worcester Art Museum, Comcast, Twitter, and American Express.
He is also a co-founder of For Freedoms, an artist-run platform for civic engagement, discourse and direct action for artists in the USA. Something Everywhere is worth a look.
