Like the wizards of old, some contemporary photographers have discovered that objects can be magic. Certainly an aura of mystery and magic wraps Patrick Tosani`s phantasmagoric photographs of everyday objects such as spoons, carpenter`s levels, drumskins, fingernails and rain.
Tosani moves in close on these objects, capturing every clinical detail with an architect`s eye. Of course, the familiar contours of reality soon dissolve under such scrutiny and the monumental size of his color prints transform ordinary things into sensuous presences and abstract artifacts.
What do you see? What do you see? The question fairly echoes from the exhibit ”Patrick Tosani: Photographer” at the Art Institute of Chicago. And the viewer is hard-pressed to answer, instantly aware that obvious answers have become absurd in the world according to Tosani, French artist, age 37.
His mural-size photographs of spoons stand sentinel over one area of the exhibit and common sense, backed by all the polite conventions of matched table settings, insists that they are all the same. But individual patterns of wear and the altering play of reflected light become unmistakable features on these giants, only to prove that they are all different.
The bubbles in the carpenter`s levels-emblems of a mechanical age-bulge against the two-dimensional barrier of the photograph with organic, suggestive connotations. Drums should call to mind rhythm and harmony. But the beating that the drumskins take translates visually to photographs suggesting cratered, chaotic landscapes as they might be seen from space. Fingernails, so carefully manicured in fashion shots, are bitten raw and isolated from the rest of the body when Tosani photographs them. They become abstracted yet seductive.
”From the kitchen drawer, he extracts objects teeming with life and vitality. In the tool chest he finds sexy shapes. The mechanical workings of the camera make these photographs possible and the formalist in Tosani makes them balanced and satisfying. But, ultimately, it is the artist`s imagination that orchestrates the science and magic of photography,” writes Sylvia Wolf, of the Art Institute`s photography department, in the exhibit catalog
(”Patrick Tosani,” $19.95).
The exhibit is part of ”Illinois Salutes France,” a monthlong extravaganza of cultural programs celebrating ties with France. Tosani has been feted and decorated by French diplomats in the United States as part of the celebration. The Art Institute organized his exhibit and catalog in collaboration with the Association Francaise d`Action Artistique and support of the Credit Agricole. All sale proceeds from the catalog and a poster will be applied toward the purchase of Tosani`s works for the Art Institute.
Tosani is a trailblazer, a master of the double meanings photography deploys so well, an explorer of how the medium reshapes experience. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his ”Portrait” series where each person is rendered as a myopic blur. Images of Braille symbols that appear on the portraits give clues to identity, though the symbols are meaningless to most people who can ”see” them but can`t read their content and equally meaningless to the person who could ”read” them by touch. Touch, after all, is superfluous to the flat surface of the world in a photograph.
The metamorphosis that occurs in transferring object to image attracted him to photography, said Tosani in a recent interview for which Wolf acted as interpreter.
”I began photographing 15 years ago as an amateur. I studied architecture at the Ecole Speciale d`Architecture but kept photographing while in school, always thinking about the spatial orientations of photographic reality compared to the real world,” he said.
The exhibit reflects a decade of work in which Tosani has explored an ever-expanding theme within the confines of a small, rudimentary Paris studio. ”My idea was to choose an ordinary object, an object you see every day. The spoon-a method of transporting food-is a very simple essence. But the image of the spoon is enormous. The viewer enters into the image and is transported to another kind of reality,” he said.
Certainly this reality makes more sense in the realm of poetry rather than physics, especially when Tosani touches the epic ground of fire and water. To create the images for one series, Tosani clipped newspapers into the shapes of building facades, cutting dozens upon dozens of windows into them. He imbedded the facades in ice, illuminated them from behind with candles and took his photographs.
The result is a stunning illusion of conflagation created with only candle flames and a hybrid architectural model that is literally melting. The viewer, taken in by the beauty of the images, still has to smother a laugh at the inescapable reference to the ”frozen moment” of the photograph.
”I wanted to contrast various notions of time: the transient time of ice, the time of the daily newspaper and the extended time-frame of the cutout architectural models from antiquity, all of these notions as compared to photographic time,” Tosani noted in the catalog.
In the series on rain, curtains of water fall like a shower of sparks over sculptural shapes. But titles such as ”Rain Comma” identify the Plexiglas shapes as punctuation marks or mathematical symbols that channel the deluge actually falling from a plumbing setup in Tosani`s studio.
”It took a year to get the work rolling. The hard part was how to develop a system to control the rain. What I have is like a metal tub with holes pierced in it,” Tosani says. ”It`s a game, a play between artifice and reality. With the rain there`s the passage of time and the way photography captures the passage of time. Every image is different.”
What: ”Patrick Tosani: Photographer”
Where: Art Institute of Chicago, Michigan Avenue at Adams Street: 312-443-
When: Through July 19. 10:30 am.-4:30 p.m., Monday, Wednesday-Friday; 10:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Tuesday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday; noon-5 p.m. Sunday
How much: Discretionary admission $6; $3 for children, students and seniors. Free on Tuesday
![At a recent wedding reception in Chicago, guests gathered to toast the newlyweds at the bar. Glasses were lined up in front of them, but no alcohol was poured. Instead, marijuana vapor was pumped into the upside-down glasses, which were then lifted and inhaled in unison. “A lot of people were surprised,” bride Aja Heinlein said. “They didn’t even know that was something they could do.” In the new world of cannabis, consumption at private events like weddings, holiday parties and corporate events is becoming more common. The state law that legalized recreational use of marijuana for adults 21 and […]](https://www.chicagotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ctc-L-Illinois-marijuana-wedding15_187593870.jpg?w=525 "At a recent wedding reception in Chicago, guests gathered to toast the newlyweds at the bar. Glasses were lined up in front of them, but no alcohol was poured. Instead, marijuana vapor was pumped into the upside-down glasses, which were then lifted and inhaled in unison. “A lot of people were surprised,” bride Aja Heinlein said. “They didn’t even know that was something they could do.” In the new world of cannabis, consumption at private events like weddings, holiday parties and corporate events is becoming more common. The state law that legalized recreational use of marijuana for adults 21 and […]")
