Linda Connor: From Two Worlds
From Two Worlds, Linda Connor's sixth solo exhibition with Haines Gallery, pairs two seemingly divergent perspectives. She infuses this well-known site that is rife with Americana with her unique approach to the mystic andsacred. The second revisits Connor's well-known pictures of spiritually charged sites, but these works are newly displayed as large-scale photographs, printed on silk bringing to bear a presentation that encourages an immersive reassessment of her content and intention.
The Cincinnati Museum of Art commissioned Connor to photograph the Olson House in 2006 and subsequently displayed a selection of her images alongside watercolors and drawings by the American painter Andrew Wyeth. Wyeth chronicled the Olson House and its inhabitants — siblings Christina and Alvaro Olson - in a number of works, including his seminal 1948 painting Christina's World. While Connor references specific painting by Wyeth, she also approaches this aging space through the lens of American photographic history, evoking Charles Sheeler, Walker Evans, Paul Strand and her own early photographs. As art historian Wanda M. Corn explains, "Wyeth's Olson House was often melancholy and wistful, a site of human decay and hardship; Connor's Olson House is mysteriously alive and animated."
The silk hangings on view represent a new strategy for interpreting both Connor's older and more recent works, taken in countries including Cambodia, Bali, Egypt, Peru, India and Australia. Connor utilizes this large-scale, flowing medium to consider a wide-range of subject matter. In addition to her works on silk, Connor continues investigating alternative methods for displaying her photographs through the artist's book. Hero Accordion book presents details of a mural depicting Avalokitesvara — the bodhisattva who embodies the compassion of all Buddhas — located in a fourteenth-century meditation cave in Ladakh, India, alongside images of the surrounding landscape. The book's format allows the viewer to simultaneously take in various details of this elaborate painting with remarkable views of the Himalayas.
