UNM graduate student Ian Van Coller uses dark walls and dim lighting to make viewers slow down as they enter his show, "You Travel Far."
As eyes adjust, viewers become aware that his photographs are about time and what is sacred.
Aspects of European and African sacred art begin to emerge out of the dim light. References to history and memory are everywhere. Modern ambrotypes are the central images in elaborate dark frames with embedded photographs, buttons and thick patinas. The word patina is a reference to how the surface of a three-dimensional object changes over time from use and handling during ceremonies.
"These are my monuments to South Africa - but not the official monuments I grew up with," Van Coller said. "I want to bring the past into the present."
A white South African living in the United States for the past 11 years, Van Coller describes his photographs as dark. In his artist statement he speaks of exploring his own complicity in colonialism, neo-colonialism and apartheid.
Three photographs of termite mounds have a particularly powerful presence. Van Coller explained that he chose termite mounds as his subject matter because they are much like the gold mines that the apartheid economy of South Africa was based on. In gold mines and termite mounds, most of the activity takes place below ground and out of sight.
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As a boy, Van Coller heard stories about the exploitation of blacks from his father who worked in a mine. He knew a little about the conditions black South Africans worked under, but said he did not really understand. He now sees the top of the mounds dotting the African landscape as much like the mine heads - only the tips of huge subterranean worlds some people would rather not know about.
Small transparencies and maps of mine heads are set into the wooden frames of the termite mound photographs. The shapes of the frames come from Victorian models, but the African inspired patina has distorted the shapes almost beyond recognition; they are becoming something organic.
In many works, trees or plants are photographed in the style of European explorers. There are echoes here of the 18th-century Enlightenment mania for recording and categorizing the natural world, but Van Coller is attempting to bring a holistic vision to European fragmentation of nature. Many of his frames use forms taken from early Renaissance altarpieces, but each is covered with several layers of black India ink, mud, acrylic gel medium oil and pigments.
Africans and Europeans alike have used photographs of lost loved ones to create altars - Van Coller uses pictures of Africa to make altars to his sense of loss.
Each photograph is a one of a kind ambrotype - a photograph printed on black glass. Van Coller's modern ambrotypes do not require the toxic chemicals, heavy equipment or the large glass negatives of their 19th-century prototypes, but the process is too unpredictable to make editions.
Van Coller will speak about his work on Friday at 4 p.m. in Room 1020 of the Center for the Arts. From 5-7 p.m., there will be a party in the John Sommers Gallery on the second floor of the Art building in Room 202. "You Travel Far" will be at the gallery until Sept. 8. Admission is free.
