INFECTED LANDSCAPE
Only three days left to experience "Infected Landscape" at Julie Saul Gallery, a beautiful, heartbreaking group show by four international artists/photographers who share an interest in recording hot zones and troubled territories. At first view, the pictures have a soothing serenity. Atta Kim's large 74" x 98" landscape has the cool blue green silence of an underwater scene. On closer inspection you see the wire entanglements of the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korean forces. Irishman Anthony Haughey's photographs explore issues of identity and nationalism among groups claiming the same geography: Northern Ireland and Bosnia. Texas artist Misty Keasler reveals the raw realities of poverty that display what we didn't learn from Jacob Riis's 1901 publication How the Other Half Lives. Finally Shari Kremer, an Israeli photographer whose thesis project lends the title for this show, gives us four views into Israel's landscape. Kremer has a knack for abstract composition, but details of hope are there, too. In "Defense Wall, Gilo Neighborhood," a landscape painted to replace the view blocked by the barrier reveals one way people cope.