The photographer Victor Vazquez makes a virtue of his defects. His nudes, for example, are not erotic. Yet as photographs they carry potent ideas. A lady in feathers, for instance, only evokes Santeria. Alas, poor chicken! Vazquez is a Puerto Rican nationalist. But his political views are neatly disciplined by a potent witty formalism. In this show, that formalism is often simply a white line.
Feather rocks are naturally-occurring pseudo-petroglyphs. One photo records an arrangement of feather rocks. A second photo shows the same rocks with a line of white paint across each. It’s a diptych. Illegals lined against a wall seem ready to be patted down by the cops. But a white line across their backs carries into a second black “canvas” and that single line there becomes a Spanish text considering philosophic aspects of it all, it all. It’s another diptych. A couple sitting across from each other in a Parisian park wear Puerto Rican flags as hoods. The plaza of the Pompidou has pedestrians galore along with two Puerto Rican flags — one with white lines, the other with white arrows.
Lying words fly through the air like terrible arrows and sometimes mean to kill. The usual art normally hangs on a wall in sullen silence. The photographs of Vazquez whisper back and forth, back and forth harsh words of political discontent.
The show will continue at Seraphin until January 26.
