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.

Matt Ducklo: Tomorrow Is A Long Time at Launch F18

Image above: ©Matt Ducklo, South Parkway East Church of Christ, 2011. Courtesy of Launch F18 Gallery. 
 

Launch F18 presented on March 25th,  "Tomorrow Is A Long Time", an exhibition of new photographs by Matt Ducklo. This will be the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery and the inaugural exhibition at 94 Allen Street.

Ducklo has lived and worked in Memphis, Tennessee for the past five years, having returned after a decade in New York City. The photographs on view arose from indiscriminate night drives he began to take in Memphis. Gradually, photographing became part of these excursions turning the open drive into a restless search. Taking advantage of nocturnal stillness to explore the city, Ducklo found a rich topology of light, shadow, and silence, touchstones among the uncanny.

duckImages above: ©Matt Ducklo, (left) Cut-Out, 2015; (right) 240, 2013. Courtesy of Launch F18 Gallery. 
 

Against this backdrop, Ducklo shows us varied pictures that include neighborhoods, parking lots, a jail, a school gym, the densely forested city park, a public sculpture, and a bus stop. Many of the pictures presented depict church vans, secured in cages, protected from theft. This recurring signpost of confinement and protection acts as a refrain to the diverse images of a city at night. The language within Ducklo's work reverberates what is known to be true; day follows night, but sometimes tomorrow is a long time.

Ken Kitano and Tomoko Sawada at Pace/MacGill Gallery

Photography of Joel Brodsky at Morrison Hotel Gallery