Tom Lovelace, “Untitled Red #3”, 2014

#somereallygoodones, #tomlovelace, #photogram

Do I have a favorite picture?

One of my most substantial epiphanies in most recent years has to be my reaction to a piece, “Untitled Red #3”, 2014 by Tom Lovelace, which I encountered at Photo London in the Flowers Gallery stand. The work consists of four rose colored poster boards placed together in a stepped fashion. They were said to have once been the support for theatrical posters in Milan, on or near La Scala. Mamma Mia! There is the ghost of rectangle, the dark area left where the sun couldn’t bleach the whole board. Basically it’s a monochrome with a more lightly colored frame, an aura. Is it technically a photogram? Whatever. It is photographic in the sense that light had been the agent of change. I was even surprised by the size of my reaction. I appeared to have gone mad, possessed by some unexpected divine messenger. I had been. The work represents such insight into beauty and simplicity and light and balance and and and … .

The noisiest I have ever been seeing work for the first time is probably my response to Luc Delahaye gruesome, hellish reports from the eastern part of the former Soviet Union in his “Winterreise”. If Delahaye is smart, Lovelace is a genius. He is able to winnow down the whole of photography (conceptual art and performance too I suppose) to its basics: light, paper, and voodoo it into a magical combination of balance and secrets. It’s almost a square, a little wider than tall, enough to put the viewer a bit off balance. It is for me the center of the universe.

Also the artist is generous and articulate and ambitious to be amazing.

I bought a piece by him that isn’t as great as the above but more in line with the works I have collected for several decades. It might have more than could stand owning the first.

#somereallygoodones, #theunseeneye, #wmhunt, #collectiondancingbear, #collectionblindpirate, #greatphotographs, #howilookatphotographs, #photographsfromtheunconsicous, #christies, #sansregard, #aperture, #thames&hudson, #actesud, #collectingislikerunningaroundinathunderstorm hopingyoullbehitbylightning, #aphotographsogooditmakesyoufart- lightning, #photographychangedmylifeitgavemeone, #tomlovelace, #photogram