Issue No. 28 – Control

What is the nature of control? The desire for it—and to be free of it—are essential parts of both life and art.

Exhibition Review: If These Walls Could Talk

Exhibition Review: If These Walls Could Talk

How Green Was My Desert - Buckhorn, CA 2019

© Osceola Refetoff / Courtesy of Von Lintel Gallery

Written by Jan Alex

During the pandemic all of us have likely became all too comfortable with watching the world through a window. Perhaps it is this universal familiarity with the experience of looking out from within the walls of a home that makes Osceola Refetoff’s most recent collection of images so fascinating. Currently on display at the Von Lintel Gallery in the exhibition “If These Walls Could Talk”, selected images from Refetoff’s photo series “It’s a Mess Without You” transport viewers to the abandoned towns of California’s desert and invites them to consider the circumstances which led to the melancholy scenes on display. 

'Its a Mess without You!' - Cinco, CA 2011

© Osceola Refetoff / Courtesy of Von Lintel Gallery

The images on display, all single-exposure compositions focusing on the remnants of human settlements left abandoned in the California desert, Refetoff’s photographs are simultaneously surreal and hyper-realistic. The crisp blue skies and golden glow of the sun illuminates a hollowed out home in It’s a Mess Without You!, and in How Green Was My Desert, peeling wallpaper shattered glass, and a rotting window frame the neatly planted rows of plants, and emerald green hills of the landscape just beyond the confines of the forsaken home.  By capturing the natural beauty of the landscape from within these derelict structures, Refetoff interprets the lives and dreams of these forgotten desert communities and points to the tenuous marks left behind.

Charred House on Trinity Street - Mojave, CA 2016

© Osceola Refetoff / Courtesy of Von Lintel Gallery

In these images, the window is not just an architectural subject to be considered, but also as a narrative device for framing the stories of the landscapes on display. For example. in Charred House on Trinity Street, golden light from a setting sun illuminates the charred walls of a burned down home, as if to reinforce the suns dominance in the desert and to consider the natural forces that ravaged this home. In this sense Refetoff’s images are remarkable for their consideration of the relationship between man and the natural world and the fragility of human dreams in the face of a stoic, unforgiving landscape. 

Persistent Horizon - Olancha, CA 2009

© Osceola Refetoff / Courtesy of Von Lintel Gallery

In the current moment, the collection of images manages somehow to feel perfectly timed. Though taken throughout the last several years, displayed together at a time when the world is just fully beginning to emerge from behind the safety of our walls and windows, Refetoff’s clever framing of his images takes on new meaning at a time when staring out the window is a universal experience. 

“If These Walls Could Talk” Is currently on display at the Von Lintel Gallery in Santa Monica and online here.

You Are My Dirty Needle - Amboy, CA 2021

© Osceola Refetoff / Courtesy of Von Lintel Gallery

Triggered: Polly Rusyn

Triggered: Polly Rusyn

Exhibition Review: Latin American Foto Festival

Exhibition Review: Latin American Foto Festival