Poet, superhero, Adonis, rock star, aristocrat, vandal, aesthete, dandy, rogue, explorer, father, son. Conspicuous blue circles hide penetration on pages of UK porn mags ... blue dots obscure your copulating, sweet prince, but cannot hide your vigor and virility. Your stage name is made with blue dots, your costume is of glitter and oil, you are cool, tough, egotistic, aloof, violent, tender, reckless, exalted, base, glorious. ~ From The Cowboy Crashing by Brett Davidson

Georgia Scherman Projects is pleased to announce its inaugural exhibition ~ a solo show by artist Fraser Stables. Entitled Solo Shoot, this exhibition features a double-channel video installation, colour photographs and a wall text piece. Working in photography and video, Stables employs conventions of documentary and performance to explore the image and narrative identities that are assumed and constructed.

Solo Shoot, 2003, a synchronized double-channel video installation, depicts Scott, in his
home, telling his own story about having twice modeled for a porn shoot. The left-hand
sequence focuses on the subject as he sits on his bed sharing his account. The camera reads his physique, his “look” and his body language. In the adjoining right-hand sequence, the camera roams around Scott’s bedroom panning across posters, images of superheroes and rock icons, ornaments, and toys. The lines in his narration are from a single-channel audio, unsynchronized till the end. They include, Stables explains, “moments of idiosyncratic yet reasonable logic (“we had a couple of hours to kill, so we killed those”), as well as overarching themes of possible redemption and self-awakening.”

Disjunction is suggested throughout: the adjacent video images, the subject and his
environment and the gaps between unsynchronized sound. At the same time, however, there is an uncanny aesthetic equivalence between the subject and his surroundings: a Gumby tattoo on Scott’s arm and a Spiderman doll on the floor; a KISS t-shirt he is wearing and an Ace Frehley doll on his dresser.

Stables continues to explore this analogous and yet confused relationship in his related series of photographs ~ an accumulation of images over multiple photo sessions. In one image, an October 2004 calendar appears with dates crossed off; in another, a Batman movie poster promotes a past and unaltered release date. Skin, hair, and tattooed icons are viewed alongside and in relation to the fabric of the living space. The subject changes clothes and adds tattoos, while posters, images, superheroes, rock icons, ornaments, and toys appear, move, and disappear. “Throughout these environmental portraits,” Stables explains “I am interested in the evidence of individual image-construction and the relation between generated and imported imagery, performance, and cultural signs.”

Stables was born in Falkirk, Scotland in 1973. He received a BA from the Edinburgh College of Art, and an MFA from the University of Guelph in Ontario. He was an artist in residence in the Core Program (MFA, Houston). His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in the US, Canada, and Europe. He is currently Assistant Professor of Photography and Digital Media, Smith College, MA.

Opening reception for the artist: Thursday, September 28th, 6 to 8 pm.