Dancing in The Dark - Joanne Dugan

DANCING IN THE DARK

Joanne Dugan

2022

Catalogue essay

Dancing in the Dark

“Dancin' in the dark 'til the tune ends

We're dancin' in the dark and it soon ends

We're waltzin' in the wonder of why we're here

Time hurries by, we're here, and gone

Lookin' for the light … “ *1

Joanne Dugan’s work is meditative and spare. She is mindful.

The artist urges us on a path of heightened consciousness with her series of cyanotypes, photograms and luminograms. The latter are light, chemistry and paper, only.

Imagine photographic still lifes of fruit with the bowl of apples missing,. Don’t look for Man Ray’s house keys here.

These abstract works act like focusing devices for the artist and the viewer. Dugan can work with black and white horizontals (“Balancing”) or verticals (“Duality”). Some of these behave like rubbings of body parts, like blue — cyanotype — fingerprints (“Insight”), and some are grids of smaller works brought together, photogram assemblages. (“Centering”, “Instinct”, “Acceptance”).

Look at her titles above in quotation marks in addition to others like “Instinct”, “Centering”, “Transcendence”,and“Enlightenment”. Sign me up. She really does see in the dark. It is entirely appropriate that she is exhibiting these at Black Box Projects. She also sees perfectly well in the daylight which is where cyanotypes happen.

Dugan lets the light — and shadows — pass through her like a Delphic oracle. It is lovely to find an artist still so in touch with her unconscious with these rather formal considerations of light on paper.

The artist likes a line attributed to another artist, James Turrell: “I use light as a material, but my medium is actually perception. I want you to sense yourself sensing — to see yourself.”*2. She aspires “to create abstract pieces that invite viewers to experience what it feels like to stand in front of something consciously and to see it in a new way.” *3

Abstract work has the potential to suggest. Great photographs — art — for me are best when enigmatic, when the viewer has to complete the journey that the artist has nudged you towards. You either get it or you simply think the work is well done and good looking. I get it. I hope you will also.

As instructed, look at yourself looking.

Here is a minor observation on the title of the exhibition “Persistent Awakening”. This strikes me as both silly and desirable, like someone with bladder trouble; you’re glad everything works except for the interruptions.. We all seek transcendence. We want to be more connected or enlightened, but how awkward to have it happen repeatedly, to be psychically nudged over and over as in “wake up … again”. I’m simply looking at you looking at the title of the show.

*2 Profile of James Turrell by Hector Feliciano, “LA Times”, June 6 1991

*3 Conversation between the writer and artist, 2020