Good things come in small packages.

As an experiment for an oceanography class I took back in middle school, we released a series of “drift cards” off of the Brooklyn Bridge. Each drift card, about 4”x8”, was a simple wooden piece that each class member personalized and inscribed with our contact information then set free. The goal of the experiment was not to litter the ocean with small pieces of brightly painted wood but to see where each one would wind up. If they were ever found, it would tell us a story of where it had been.


"Partiendo un dia", 2008, Pencil on Paper , Claudia Scalise, 2" x 2" (Folded), Courtesy of Dorsch Gallery

From the first second that I encountered Claudia Scalise’s Un Tiempo Blanco at the Dorsch gallery last month, I remembered these drift cards. Each one a small, ambiguous story of a place she had been. That place we’ve all been, each a vaguely familiar scene in its small scale has its own story, just like the cards from long ago. The scenes were not of specific places or things but rather of any street, any place. These pieces draw you in like family photographs on a mantel or refrigerator.

The second show at Dorsch, Unfaded Memories drives this quality home by reinventing the family photograph through painting. The four artists Amalia Brujs, Abner Nolan, Mary Malm and Arnold Mesches repaint, reprint and revamp all of the photographs in the exhibit. Through a general shared understanding of what such photographs stand for within a family, the artists create a new meaning for each of the pictures. Like Scalise’s street scenes, the images depicted in Unfaded Memories are familiar ones, although unspecific, we recognize a sister, a mother, a daughter, or a family outing.


"Elsewhere 1", 2008 C-Print mounted on Aluminum, 16" x 16", Abner Nolan, Courtesy of Dorsch Gallery

The one drift card that was returned to us told us a story of how it traveled and where it had been, just as the reinvention of vintage photographs into an entirely new form brings a story of where these people have been simultaneously giving us a glimpse of something entirely new.

The third show at the Dorsch is also in a small but not intimidating in scale. Instead of depictions of familiar people or places, William Keddell uses stereographs for Sphericals. Each small stereograph is a slight variation on the next, a three-dimensional world completely contained within a looking glass. Regardless of the unknown nature of the shapes within the spheres, there is a strong connection between the viewer and each piece. To get the actual experience the viewer is forced to look through the glasses of the stereograph, an action that can only be performed one person at a time, making the world inside of it – if only for that instant – belong to the viewer. While the subject matter itself may be abstract in nature and somewhat unrelated to the rest of the gallery, the action performed is a familiar one; reminiscent of the viewfinders from childhood that show pictures of airplanes, panda bears and skyscrapers or even the little pictures people at Disneyland or Six Flags took of themselves as they entered the park or went on a roller coaster and then put into a keychain view finder. The small galaxies within the stereographs are like childhood dreams of what we may imagine outer space to be like.


"Cranial Ball", 2008, Digital Print 10" x 8", plus Handmade Stereo Viewer 4.5" x 6.5: x 2.5", William Keddel, Courtesy of Dorsch Gallery
"Medicine Ball", 2008, Digital Print 10" x 8", plus Handmade Stereo Viewer 4.5" x 6.5: x 2.5", William Keddel, Courtesy of Dorsch Gallery

From a far away stance all of the pieces on the walls appear distant and unwelcoming particularly because of their scale. Small works have the tendency to only allow the viewer to look at them and not become a part of them. Upon closer inspection the images are inviting, warm and thought provoking. The string that connects the three shows is not merely the small size of each piece but the pull that brings the viewer into them and the nostalgia that is created because of it. Each show brings back a different set of memories and triggers a familiarity not often felt in contemporary art.

Title Image :
"Habia una vez un lugar no era real ni era fantastico", 2008 Oil on Wood, Claudia Scalise, 5.5" x 12", Courtesy of Dorsch Gallery