“If TVs Watched Us: Photographs by Shawn Michienzi”

The weakness of most commercial photographers who try to do artistic work is that they simply don’t have the time to pull it off. Accustomed to working fast and clean, on assignment for big bucks, successful commercial photogs like Shawn Michienzi run the real risk of falling into auto-focus formulas. They have a hard time spending the emotional and mental capital it takes to make fully considered, intimately personal art for its own sake. This may seem like a weak or overly cute pretext for a show—beautiful, oversized color prints drawn together by the presence of a TV in each one, and it does suffer from a few vices of the commercial crossover (overwritten captions, rather like Zima ad copy, break the cardinal rule of visual art—never include text if you can help it; it’s too damn irresistable and doesn’t let your audience discover the nuances of the image itself). But if you can simply enjoy the eye candy that happens when a large format color camera and a skilled photographer meet, then all the rest is commentary. With a changing context, the traditional weaknesses become strengths: There is real visual relief in clean, clear, well-composed photos in a time that is otherwise marked by distressed, degraded, and accidental images. Icebox, (612) 788-1790