Holly Lynton’s Fleeced, a photographic exhibition at Bernice Steinbaum Gallery runs from Nov. 12 through Jan. 7th. Fleeced explores religious allusions of how sheep have been symbolized in the past as well as what sheep mean today for small scale, local farmers. Lynton compiles several themes into agrarian photographs subliminally questioning what is beauty.
Each photograph is large in size and sometimes includes images of plants and other animals from local farms. These images frame sheep by depicting them in enclosed pens, revealing their irrelevance in a large industrial world. Conversely, there is a parallel between the size of the physical print and the grand, eminent presence sheep have continuously had throughout history.
Images are controlled yet relaxed; they are small yet grand, and reveal the beauty in pastoral nature as well episodes of the ordinary monotonous farm life. These collections of images seem very genuine and demonstrate moments in nature rather than nature in moments. The artist reestablishes that “grace” by attempting to photograph them at their eye level rather than from the height of the artist. Lynton prints them in sharp focus in order to unmask the wonder behind these iconic subjects.
Hooded, which portrays six sheep in their wooden slab fenced shed, has one sheep with a daring white cloth over its head not unlike the notorious group, the Klux Klux Klan. She alludes to the obvious slaughtering of animals: people. With this image, Holly Lynton inculcates that sheep are animals to observe and animals to esteem. In fact, with a light source on the left and contrasts of light and dark, it is possible to associate these sacrificial embodiments of purity to iconic lambs. Italian artist Caravaggio’s The Calling of St. Matthew, a religious work of Christian predominance, manifests this embodiment and foreshadows Lynton’s Hooded, where the selection of apostles took place or the lambs that represent them.
When photographing such banal animals in nature, one begins to raise questions of the past; however the rest of the images should not be ignored for they communicate the alternative message of humble small animals as faces of nature and an introspective look into the past and society in the present.
courtesy of http://hollylynton.wordpress.com
