Manipulating Youth
At first glance, the two shows involving photography, youth and digital manipulation on West 25th-Marc Yankus at Clampart and Loretta Lux at Yossi Milo Gallery-seem promising. The images are sophisticated, and the skill levels are high. Lux and Yankus were both trained as painters, and eventually began using photography and computer augmentation. The smooth surfaces draw you in but the final results seem thin, making me wonder at which point the special effects became affectation. Perhaps Artificial is the new Real. There's a lot of tweaking going on here, and in the end I feel as manipulated as the images have been.
With Loretta Lux, the creep-factor kept me engaged. Lux's little darlings exist frozen in time, and reminded me of Gunter Grass' Oskar from The Tin Drum, so imagine my delight at seeing "The Drummer"-a wee blond girl tapping away with a determined stare. Another wicked delight is "The Waiting Girl" sitting stiffly on the settee while a cat writhes beside her. "The Walk" and "Sasha & Ruby" reference Diane Arbus' "Identical Twins, Roselle, NJ" (1967) in the super-sinister manner of Stanley Kubrick's twins in The Shining.
If Loretta Lux's pictures buzz, then Marc Yankus' sigh. The images are blurred but longing is palpable. "Two Towers" shows the San Remo Apartments twice aglow in the night and "Boston Downtown" makes me want to hop a bus even though I know better. "Clouds from My Father's Roof" has all of the color and gesture of a Tiepolo ceiling, and "Caitlin at Factory" is a scene out of D.H. Lawrence. Yankus is skilled in capturing the erotic charge of young men still dewy with youth but the forthright beauty of "James at Eleven" made me blush.