Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Nicholas Muellner: Asea
Light Work Gallery

Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University, Syracuse

Nicholas Muellner's "Asea" offers up photographs depicting people pantomiming in a verdant landscape made complex with surreal lighting; these images are paired with an issue of Contact Sheet that serves as a guidebook to the exhibition. The text in Contact Sheet is wryly poetic and succinct, and loosely leads us from picture to picture. "Asea" takes us somewhere without making its destination specific, setting a tone and mood that guides our desire for meaning but refuses to precisely locate it.

With "Asea," Muellner projects a state of limbo and a search for personal meaning within photography's inevitable narrative limits. We are asked to ponder alone, in a subjective state that is not fixed but which hovers within the parameters established by the photographs and text. Ultimately, we engage with "Asea" because it is at once thoughtful, beautiful, and curious.