Photographer Anna Gaskell will be a guest speaker at 8 p.m. Nov. 19, as part of the UNLV art department's Visiting Artist Program, coordinated by art professor Robert Wysocki. The lecture will be held in Classroom Building Complex, Room A-108, on the UNLV campus. The event is free and open to the public.
A different kind of fictional world can be observed in Gaskell's work. Her series of photographic episodes (Wonder and Override) are based on a loose re-interpretation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Gaskell treats her medium as a stage onto which she projects her child-centered concerns and enigmatic dramatic action. Apart from the fictional references, however, there lurks a disquieting sub-text often with sadistic overtones that centers around notions of childhood identity and transformation, the transition from innocence to experience, naivet? to knowing. Suppressed eroticism and sexual awakening, on the other hand, are expressed through images of the fractured body.
The artist adopts a cinematic approach towards photography employing 'actors' artificial lighting and 'framing' the action taking place within the picture space. Unusual viewing angles and close ups, violent cropping and stark contrasts of shadow and light result in a set of menacing claustrophobic spaces that intimate not only anxiety about ones coming of age, but a general psychological unease. Gaskell's work does not posses specific narrative but rests rather on a series of suggestive 'actions'. In fact, all of Gaskell's work is based on implication rather than description. It is this ambiguity that reinforces the sense of malaise and intrigue for the viewer.
A Des Moines native, Gaskell divides her time between New York and Iowa. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and Yale University, where she received a Masters of Fine Art. Gaskell has presented solo exhibitions at the Aspen Museum of Art, Aspen, Colorado; Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, Florida; White Cube, London; Castello di Rivoli, Torino, Italy; and the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa; and participated in numerous group exhibitions. Gaskell's group exhibitions include "Photography: An Expanded View," Guggenheim Museum, New York; "Generation Z," P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York; and "Stills: Emerging Photography in the 1990's," Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, among others.
