If you have a chance to alight at Panopticon Gallery in Boston’s Kenmore Square this summer, you’ll find a sweet treat of a summer show in “Flight of Fancy”. Distinctly different work by photographers Kerry Mansfield, Claire Rosen and Stephen Sheffield share a colorful spirit of flight, whether it be physical or metaphorical. The show will be on view through September 3rd, 2018.
“Water’s Edge Couple, 2011” by Kerry Mansfield (courtesy of the artist and Panopticon Gallery, Boston).
Spacious air and seascapes by Kerry Mansfield exude a soaring sense of escape. Her expansive images feature atypical viewpoints, either hovering above and gazing to the ocean below or sitting mountaintop and scanning the sky above. With elegantly balanced compositions and gentle blue-green palette, Mansfield’s photographs are at once freeing and tranquil.
“Orange Glider, 2011” by Kerry Mansfield (courtesy of the artist and Panopticon Gallery, Boston).
“Canary Wing Bee Bee No. 7756, 2012” by Claire Rosen (courtesy of the artist and Panopticon Gallery, Boston).
Claire Rosen gratifies both our fascination with flight and the appeal of things rare and mysterious in her impeccably crafted photographs of exotic tropical birds. With a larger-than-life scale that highlights their delicate, vibrant splendor and pert, inquisitive nature, the inherent contradiction of a wild creature perched in a studio-lit setting is quelled by Rosen’s aesthetic and emotional equilibrium. Her spare composition, subdued lighting and the mellifluous patterns and hues in her wallpaper backdrops combine with the birds’ unruffled curiosity to imbue Rosen’s photographs with a sense of exquisite domestic calm.
“Parakeet No. 6977, 2012” by Claire Rosen (courtesy of the artist and Panopticon Gallery, Boston).
“White Faced Hurled Cockatiel No. 7866, 2012” by Claire Rosen (courtesy of the artist and Panopticon Gallery, Boston).
“An Audience II, 2018” by Stephen Sheffield (courtesy of the artist and Panopticon Gallery, Boston).
Stephen Sheffield’s campy collages let our imagination take flight. With artfully composed layers of architectural plans, mid-century couture magazine models (whose heads are very often encircled in the manner of haloed Renaissance angels) and elements of flora and fauna, rocket science and domestic bliss, the viewer is encouraged to devise lavish, fanciful narratives. Sheffield’s shrewd planting of key visual markers for competing forces like past versus future, confidence versus ambiguity and nature versus technology, infuse his frames with dynamic energy.
“Blue Bird Like Smoke, 2018” by Stephen Sheffield (courtesy of the artist and Panopticon Gallery, Boston).
“First Class Upgrade, 2018” by Stephen Sheffield (courtesy of the artist and Panopticon Gallery, Boston).
For more information about this exhibit, go to: https://www.panopticongallery.com/flight-of-fancy/
Feature Image: “Man on Cliff, 2011” by Kerry Mansfield (courtesy of the artist and Panopticon Gallery, Boston).
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