Brooks Brother, 2013.
Gelatin silver print.
Courtesy of the gallery.

Passing Through, 2013.
Gelatin silver print.
Courtesy of the gallery.

Currently on view at the Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York is “Curtains,” a solo exhibition of photography by Eileen Quinlan. In this new series of black-and-white gelatin silver prints, Quinlan exerts a kind of pressure upon the photographic substrate, and consequently upon every image in the exhibition. Quinlan alternates between a passive modality of production – allowing the development process itself to degrade the negative’s surface – and active intervention, attacking the surface of the film with steel wool. Corrosion and abrasion alternately conceal and disrupt the images in these works, which take as their subjects varied visual motifs that have rarely appeared in her previous work: new portraits and rephotographed snapshots of the same figures from years prior; a close-up of a crocheted doily; printed stripes and hash patterns; imageless negatives, in which the process of decay itself forms an accidental composition; and a rephotographed reproduction of Gutai artist Saburo Murakami’s 1955 “Laceration of Paper” performance.

“Curtains” is on view through December 15th, 2013.

For more information visit Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York.