Wednesday Edition: Luke Strosnider

Greetings from the West, collector friends! I write to you from San Francisco, bundled up in a cozy wrap to ward off the delicious chill of morning fog. I love the cozy, and I love today's photography edition by photographer, writer and all around smart guy Luke Strosnider.

Our editions of Every Chair at the Visual Studies Workshop are a shining example of why doing 20x200 is so much fun. I love figuring out interesting ways to experiment with our format without breaking it; Luke's project provides an excellent avenue for such an inquiry.

His typology of chairs is so good - simple, funny and somehow really touching. As with all typologies, his treatment of his subjects speaks simultaneously to sameness and difference. We've structured the edition in a way that allows collectors to look at them the same way.

Our edition of 200 is comprised of 200 unique chair portraits - every collector will receive a different, randomly chosen photo. In treating his subjects as though he is shooting traditional portraits, he anthropomorphizes them; considered singly, each seems imbued with its own character. Certain chairs elicit from me the cooing and aww-ing I normally reserve for the sight of otters holding hands. Others are velveteen rabbits well-used, but taken for granted. Every single one is unique, selected from the pool of 522.

Our medium edition is a well-thought out grid, representing the variety of chairs Luke's documented. Considered together and carefully arrayed, this version speaks to my design-jones, delivering a deft, populist and decidedly contemporary response to the Vitra Design Museum's iconic chairs poster.

Our largest edition drops science. Consider it the periodic table of 522 chairs of the Visual Studies Workshop. Luke explained to me via email that the ordering (L to R, starting in the upper L) is the order in which I made the photographs. It was important to me that this project reflect some measure of the passage of time: my own time, "photographic time," and the history of the Visual Studies Workshop. At first blush it seemed off-kilter, but then I came to realize that its asymmetry spoke directly to the project's authenticity, intelligence and charm.

Luke has been one of my internet (and less frequently, in-person) pals for a while now, connecting with the gallery in various ways. Two of his Visual Studies cohorts, Kirby Pilcher and James Rajotte, are Hey, Hot Shot! alumni. Luke himself has been a frequent visitor to the gallery and has written intelligent commentary about several exhibitions. His response to Nina Berman's debut at my gallery was thought-provoking and his review of Photographs from the New World for Afterimage was one of the best things written about the show. (And a lot was written about that particular exhibition.) When Luke debuted his chairs project on Flickr, I was totally thrilled, because I knew that it was the perfect opportunity for us to finally work directly together on something.

I couldn't be more pleased with the results. The edition has a lot in common with other interactions I've had with Luke - it's been fun and inspiring and it's made me look at things a little differently. Exactly what art and artists should do, so very well done by Mr. Strosnider.

And with that, I take my leave till next week, when I'll be back with more art and tales of the West. Have fun out there!

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