room for paper 08 - Rachael Jablo: under a circus sky, recent photographs

With the eighth offering in the room for paper, we are concluding our Big Top “diptych,” presenting the recent work of Bay Area photographer Rachael Jablo, photographic C-Prints from her ongoing series entitled, Under a Circus Sky. In contrast to our previous circus-themed exhibition of Susan Fel... Read more

With the eighth offering in the room for paper, we are concluding our Big Top “diptych,” presenting the recent work of Bay Area photographer Rachael Jablo, photographic C-Prints from her ongoing series entitled, Under a Circus Sky. In contrast to our previous circus-themed exhibition of Susan Felter’s vintage studies of the performers themselves, shown here in April, Rachael Jablo has chosen through her shots of still arena exteriors, moonlit lots and empty bleachers, to concentrate on an architecture of absence. She exploits the hallow light of after-hours to mitigate between the outer and inner life of spectacle, a permeable membrane defined by the thinly ribbed enclosures of her subject circus tents. The presence of the performers and the crowds is inferred; the action is off-stage and out of time. Jablo manages to wrestle a quite, yet strangely emotive presence from draped canvas, diagonal tie-lines and oblique shadows. Her colors are still the primaries of the ring, but toned down a notch in value, red, yellow and blue in shadow. Her subject is the world without us. And the one within us.