“Relative Closeness”

KayLynn Deveney, Watching the world, 2001–06.

Relationships force us to feel and ask us to confront ourselves. In a show with a high cheese potential, this poignant collection confronts touchy issues without trite sentimentality.

For more than ten years, self-taught artist Harry Callahan photographed his wife and, eventually, abstracted her nude form. In Eleanor (1947), he whitewashes her body and zooms in on her back, buttocks and thighs to create what looks almost like a black twig against a white background. 

On the homosexual end of the spectrum, Croatian artist Hrvoje Slovenc subtly approaches the politics of same-sex relationships through images inspired by static 19th-century wedding photographs of unsmiling couples in their best clothes. In Don Price and Wilkie T. Pretorious (2007), two older gay men sit beside one another in black suits. Though one holds a bouquet, both stare straight ahead with their hands clasped in their laps. Slovenc’s cautious yet powerful message seeps into viewers’ minds: Queer people exist in a society that discourages them from openly expressing emotion, let alone marrying. 

In Jen Davis’s work, the artist turns the camera on her obese body. In Untitled no. 15, morning light illuminates her face and torso while blue light streams in through another window. Wearing loose black clothing, she confronts herself in front of the camera without pity or self-deprecation.

These honest, emotional images should connect with anyone who drops in on MoCP’s show.—Alicia Eler