Pooling, fading, and bleeding in and out of focus, Dissolve reproduces in full color the recent exhibited work by American multimedia artist Fred Cray — uniquely manipulated photographs that seem to bring a touch of human vulnerability and variability back into photographic memory. Each hardback book comes with one unique photograph insert, to be handled with care.
“Few artists have rejected the inherent reproducibility of photography more consistently than Fred Cray. Throughout his career, he has restlessly experimented with approaches designed to deliberately break down the medium’s mechanistic nature, from darkroom manipulations and multiple exposures to punching holes in his prints and adding collage elements. His various (and often mysterious) forays into process have inevitably led to unique pictures, where the native precision of photography wrestles with the hand of the artist.
“Cray continues this innovative exploration of the edges of the medium in his newest works. Starting with a range of fairly standard photographic imagery (sunsets, landscapes, portraits, nudes etc.), he has printed the images on paper that repels the ink. So instead of resolving into pictures with crisp edges and sharp details, the ink piles up into wet pools that blossom into abstraction. The aesthetic is something akin to watercolor paint with just a bit too much water, where droplets alternately expand and dissolve into fluid and uncontrolled washes of color. Coming from a starting point of photography, the images seem to be breaking down, their rigidity collapsing into ephemeral essences.
“… In the end, Cray’s core impulse seems far removed from some sort of neo-Pictorialism – he’s not trying to fawningly emulate the look of painting, but instead trying to forcefully deconstruct photography. … Held right at the tipping point of representation and abstraction, Cray’s dissolved photographs allude to more amorphous and nuanced realities, revealing that there can be much more to a photograph than its obvious clarity.” - Collector Daily
“Cray’s multiple layers imply movement, both of time and image. This interweaving sets a cadence that is both visually rigorous and seductively intimate. Cray continues to make work that suggests that a secret is about to be revealed. … Cray’s entire oeuvre has played the balance of the image as a relic from real life and as a fantastic creation from the artist’s hand. … This body of work presents a new development in Cray’s ongoing interest in visual labyrinths. Portraits, landscapes, still lifes feature the accidental and unexpected connections of an almost aleatoric process. Fortuity and luck are assisted by rigorous editing of these surprising combinations. In these experiments, Cray formalizes the coincidental by emphasizing the conscious process of composition.” - NY Art Beat