Arteco Exhibition Redefines Time, Circumstance With Photography (back)
By Becca Ramspott (Special to the Cumberland Times-News)
Photographer Dave Romero invites the public to participate in a willing suspension of disbelief in his latest exhibition, "Resin, Metals, and Mist: Photographic Innovations", on view from Oct. 24 through Nov. 30 at the Arteco Gallery in downtown Cumberland.
Borrowing glimpses of the past and the present, Romero fuses photographs of pastoral and urban settings into patinated copper, gold leaf, transparent film and glass, making his images feel like they're delicately cocooned somewhere between crowded dreams and forgotten decades. The perfect promise of early-morning clouds, a light beam falling through the cracks of a decrepit building, the carefully hidden emotions behind a punk rocker's defiant stare-all of these find their way into Romero's attentive line of vision. The progression of time is also negotiated in creative ways through his imagery. Stars might hover over daytime, skies might become wrinkles in time in pools of water, a face might preciously decay in a dazzle of metal.
But none of these images are limited to photography's traditional, flat, framed-print format. "I feel constrained by the straight photograph on a wall," Romero says. "In this show, I'm playing with different processes to 'unconstrain' images."
Those processes might include mounting a photo intaglio portrait on spattered, patinated copper or layering a print on film between gold or silver leaf and thick resin to give it a luminous depth flecked with light and grit. Romero also experiments with squares of glass stacked inside gleaming boxes of metal and back illuminated by light. These glass works feel like a cross between a kaleidoscope and a slideshow: hints of different photographs are layered together, to form something curious yet elusive.
"Resin, Metals, and Mist: Photographic Innovations" highlights not only the scenic beauty of Western Maryland, but also its industrial history. The sawtooth portion of the Footer's Dye Works building and the railroad both surface as compelling fixtures in Romero's imagery, along with a heady mix of earth, sun, sky and shadow. Romero's use of metals, particularly his inclusion of gold leaf, also hint at the cost of industry, development and progress, with gleaming beds of metal mounting glimpses of the past. The whole spectrum of urban wilderness versus pastoral beauty is given its due, in a variety of formats that defy just one dimension or simply putting an idea to paper. It's a lovely evolution in both Romero's development as an artist and in the medium of photography itself, a sophisticated and dazzling mix that hovers somewhere between memory and imagination.
Romero's exhibition kicks off with an opening reception from 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24, and runs through Nov. 30. The Arteco Gallery is located at, 60 Pershing Street, one block from Baltimore Street in Downtown Cumberland (across from the District Court and next to Merchants' Alley). For more information visit www.artecogallery.com or call 301-777-8888.