David Spitzer, whose digital photographs are now on display at the Phillips Museum of Art’s Rothman Gallery, will discuss his work at a reception 4:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 19. Spitzer, who is known for his photographs of jazz musicians, has created set of images of fascinating duality: monumental vs. small-scale, the inexpressiveness of buildings and the inexpressiveness of store dummies, the creativity of architects and display designers, reflections in and on reflections. And, at the same time he captures the simple pleasures of sight-seeing and window shopping, all in single images.
Also worth checking out are Edward Evan’s calligraphic paintings, upstairs in the Dana Gallery. They’re not calligraphic in the usual sense: Evans uses airbrushes to convincingly create an illusion of folded, bent, curved and even pierced and torn surfaces, bearing “relief” or “incised” images of Chinese characters or archaic letter forms. The colors are stony or dim and metallic; the characters difficult (or impossible) to read. “I do not want the writing to be easily read,” says Evans in his artist’s statement. “There is beauty and a strange comfort to not being easily decipherable.”
