'Face Value' is a new group show at Austin's Davis Gallery. Curated by Susannah Morgan, it's an exploration of portraiture as an artistic theme, and of how that theme is addressed by different and artists employing different techniques.
There's work from photographers Leon Alesi, Scott David Gordon, and Lesley Nowlin; they're joined by Jamie Panzer, whose makes use of photographs in his collage work. They're all creating portraits of a kind, but their approaches (in terms of concept and execution) are all different.
Nowlin imagines an image and then works to create it, staging her subjects to achieve the look she envisions. A twin herself, she's been photographing pairs of twins for years now, and her recent work in that series will be on display at Davis Gallery.
Alesi strives not to create a moment but to capture one. He spends time with his subject in their homes, getting a feel for their personalities and trying to capture their essence with a single shot.
Gordon's been working lately with panoramic photos, mostly of artists or creative types. He takes a series of photos over the course of a few minutes, capturing an artist in various stages of creating.
Panzer works in multiple media; for 'Face Value', he's showing some recent collage work. Playing with the idea of pareidolia (the phenomenon of seeing faces in objects that are not faces), he's created a series of collages that offer a different perspective on the idea of portraiture.
All four artists will be on hand for an artists' talk at the gallery on October 1.
