Vanessa Albury, Shadowgraphs, installation view, Benrubi Gallery, New York, Image courtesy of the artist, 2018

Gustav Dore’s illustration of the Rosa Celeste is a depiction of Dante and Beatrice, of the Divine
Comedy, gazing into “highest heaven.” There we see a spinning host of seraphim and angels
receding in rings and bands: an infinite movement that dissolves into the sublime center of the
heavenly sky. Vanessa Albury’s latest works are made with disintegrating chandeliers pressed
against light-sensitive paper, and some recall Dore’s sense and image. Her light-born forms
create motion filled patterns in the deep, chemical blues and they likewise spiral into unseen air,
linking material to the spirit. Her work is not visually distant from the Romantic illustrator’s
presentation of angels in the sky, yet they are non-ecclesiastic – remaining true to the physical as
a conduit for transcendence. We can look at her images in the same way Beatrice and Dante gaze
into mystery; however, using them as transitory passages to a radiant immanence, one felt rather
than seen.

Vanessa Albury, Shadowgraphs, installation view, Benrubi Gallery, New York, Image courtesy of the artist, 2018

In Albury’s cyanotypes, as light pours through disintegrating matter, we are knit to the past.
However, the works often make efforts to escape history. They are not sentimental, but utilize
principles underlying optics to remain part of our present. The light she catches belies a process
of empiric sensitivity that feels almost radical, using material in unforeseen ways to bind us
again to the ethereal. In her sculptures, this sense of experiment and repurposing is redoubled as
she engages with the material of filmstrip as a sculptor. Working with film as matter, Albury
chooses to ossify it into stone or strands of opaque ribbon. As objects, film is sapped of its
magic, light and dark, and left instead to be remarked upon as a remnant of some postulated lost
time. We are left to wonder who we would be, should film become stone. Behind Albury’s work
is hope, one that Dore also envisioned in his engraving of Dante and Beatrice confronting the
infinite sky. It is a hope of transmutation and acceptance into purity.

Vanessa Albury, Shadowgraphs, installation view, Benrubi Gallery, New York, Image courtesy of the artist, 2018

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Shadowgraphs, a solo exhibition of works by Vanessa Albury was on view from November 30, 2017 to January 20, 2018
in the Project Room of Benrubi Gallery. This essay is the first contribution by Max Razdow for Eyes Towards the Dove. The two artists also appeared in Mist Wreathed at SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Curated by Kari Adelaide and Max Razdow, from March 6th through March 12th, 2018.