Ariel Rosenbloom – Untitled (2011)

I can’t endorse Rosenbloom’s work across the board. Her use of color is slap dodge–running a gamut from dull to loud-mouthed gimmickry. Her B&W work is better–but still telegraphs a blueprint-rather-the-building awareness.

However, short falls aside, there is at least three consistently challenging aspects to her work.

1. She thinks a lot about how framing transacts with her images,
2. She favors portrait orientation (and I will extend her a free and clear pass as far as #skinnyframebullshitery goes since even though some of her stuff definitely is, she demonstrates a hyper self-consciousness in how she deploys it and situates her subject in the frame quite a bit like Ryan Muirhead),
3. Although she’s struggling to bring it fully to bear on her work, she has a similar based-upon-how-I-show-you-this-thing-what-can-I-get-you-to-imply-about-what-you-aren’t-seeing impetus to Yung Cheng Lin.

The framing in this image doesn’t exactly fail but it’s clunky. What works is the meditative expression and drape of the skirt over the edge of the cellar door.