Brian Yates

Brian Yates, Untitled (Chandelier), 2008.

Chicago-based artist Brian Yates is addicted to nostalgia. His paint-encrusted photographs of recently abandoned spaces and places remind viewers of a beautiful time that has passed, while suggesting a messy aftermath. These images are so enticing that the seemingly rushed, paint-covered collages in the second half of the show are even more disappointing by comparison.

In a series of untitled color photo contact sheets, Yates juxtaposes images of unmade beds, suggesting the sad scenarios that led to their occupants’ hurried departures. In two stills, blue light shines on a white blanket and sheets; frames in the row below capture a farmhouse bathed in yellow light. Underneath those images, Yates places a pair of shots of a murky-green lawn chair that looks as though it has been left out to rot through one too many rainstorms. The artist layers scratchy, painterly marks across the surface of his photographs with a deft attention to detail, intensifying the sense that we view them through a haze of memory.

But just when it seems as if Yates has this unusual technique down pat, he creates an awkward disconnect: He obliterates the backgrounds of three small square paintings by scratching white paint and red globs all over their surfaces, making these pieces feel like meaningless knockoffs of Abstract Expressionism. Considering Yates’s ability to create poetry out of photographed space and paint alone, it’s a shame he didn’t continue the first series’ more emotionally expressive work.