And we’re back… back to communing for art’s sake. If you’re looking for something intimate and off the trodden path, there’s Caleb Stein’s exhibition “Down by the Hudson.” It’s a focused collection of subdued, low-contrast, black-and-white photographs featuring water in nearly every shot. Reflected light is always at play, mirroring and distorting the subjects. The photos present a pseudo-timelessness, as though these shots could have been taken last century, last year, yesterday, or tomorrow. There are no dateable electronics. Boys wrestle with each other. Girls lounge along a creek bank in plain swimsuits. A teen boy bathes himself; his sudsy, somewhat chubby torso carefully directed into a Madonna-like tranquility. Given the singular setting, it’s as if we’re invited into an exclusive hideaway of “rushed footsteps” and “subsequent splash” (or so claims the press release). Without context, it could be mistaken as an unvarnished space that the artist happened upon. But no—the artist admitted during opening-weekend conversations that the photos were mostly choreographed. Stein’s relationship with the subjects took years to cultivate and each image took hours to individually generate.

Caleb Stein, “MATTHEW & ODEN.” Image courtesy of the artist and ROSEGALLERY.

However, not all were so meticulously crafted. The photo entitled SHANJAY & SHERIKA was almost cut from the exhibition because it was shot happenstance. It’s my favorite piece, too. The shot is a closeup of a Black teen couple submerged up to their shoulders. The woman wraps herself around the man, sideways practically. Is this an embrace? Is she guarding him? Or are they a unit that’s guarding the creek from outsiders? The man, kept within her pomerium, appears perfectly tragic. They gaze at us with this quixotic look. Maybe haughty disdain verging on prideful scorn? Is this their earnest reaction to the invasion of an emergent artist, one ostensibly caucasian and London-born? Or has Stein molded them into his likeness, a less egalitarian world where conferred subjects sit (or in this case, tread water) with the demeanor of a court painting? There’s so much to consider when a London-born artist showcases Black and white subjects in America; more than can fit in one review. Especially when the subjects appear so graceful and at ease. Given our situation, this is clearly fantasy. Yet, this is why Shanjay and Sherika hold the key to the exhibition. They feel as if they too are raising their own suspicions about the placid nature of the many staged photos surrounding them.

ROSEGALLERY
Bergamot Station Arts Center
2525 Michigan Avenue, B-7
Santa Monica, CA 90404
On view through October 29, 2022