Thursday, February 25, 2016

Sitting in the Dark with Strangers: Miniature model scenes capture the romance of movies

Sitting in the Dark with Strangers: Miniature model scenes capture the romance of movies
02.16.2016
09:21 am

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Art
Movies

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Richard Finkelstein
Sitting in the Dark with Strangers: Miniature model scenes capture the romance of movies
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Richard Finkelstein, the esteemed Philadelphia-born artist who was trained as a trial lawyer, has a great many exhibitions to his credit, but his latest show will surely exert a special pull on anyone who loves the movies. It’s called “Sitting in the Dark with Strangers,” and it is a series of photographs of painstakingly fashioned scenes using miniatures, all of which center on the romantic power of cinema.
Many of the pictures hark back to the golden age of cinema, when the nation’s cities were replete with majestic movie palaces, but Finkelstein wisely does not limit himself to that lens, featuring tableaux of people watching movies on TV in living rooms or projected on screens in parks, and so on.
The silver screen romance and intrigue of Hitchcock’s Suspicion occupy the approximate center of the frame, but Finkelstein expands the focus to include B-movie classics (The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman) and the art house glories of the 1960s (Bergman’s Persona, Godard’s Alphaville). One of the most resonant images yokes Pinocchio and A Clockwork Orange to make a statement about the wide range of emotional registers that movies can encompass.
“Sitting in the Dark with Strangers” had a run at the Robert Mann Gallery in Chelsea in December and January, but you can see these images and more at Finkelstein’s website.
From the Robert Mann Gallery’s press release:

Movies open a window into the world of our fantasies, melding what we see with what we desire, what we fear and what we hate. In Finkelstein’s photographs we enter into this world, sitting in the darkness as characters and as dreamers, then pull back as only observers. While the movie ends and the usher comes with his broom to sweep up the sodas and popcorn, while the posters are torn down and discarded, the images continue to live on inside us.


New York Magazine recommended the show, asserting that visitors can behold “all the wonder and mystery of Joseph Cornell crossed with Edward Hopper and Alfred Hitchcock.”

































via Messy Nessy Chic

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Extremely detailed miniature ‘Addams Family’ set
Posted by Martin Schneider



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