Roger Ballen: Boarding House

It is difficult to explain this place except that I think it exists in some way or another in most people's mind.

--Roger Ballen

Roger Ballen: Boarding House

through December 23, 2009

at Gagosian Gallery (980 Madison Avenue)

Roger Ballen's current show at Gagosian displays theatrical photos taken between 2004 and 2008 in a 3 storey warehouse in Johannesburg, South Africa, which is "hidden among the gold mines... and inhabited by disenfranchised, impoverished families, fugitives and witch doctors. Lacking walls, many rooms are separated only by rugs, blankets, and metal sheets. In his visually complex tableaux, Ballen forgoes a strictly documentary approach and casts further doubt on their veracity, intervening to alter each room, and collaborating directly with the subject to create the sculptures and drawings that appear in the photographs."
Altogether, Ballen and his subjects explore fact, fiction, and the workings of the human psyche through drawing, sculpture and (square format) photography. The outcome creates "visual ambiguities as universal metaphors of the human condition." It could be called intentional obtuseness. It could be called 'meaning is subjective and ambiguous and so meaningful art oftentimes is as well.'

Visit Roger Ballen's site and other bodies of work here.