Ryan Oskin, Subdivision @ Rubber Factory

It is MFA season, and I have seen a lot work by young people of late. As a result, I have no idea where photography is headed or what it even is now-a-days. The one thing has jumped out at me: the assortment of random pictures that look good together and kind of make sense is certainly an ongoing proposition for graduate students. As a photographic trend, I have officially had my fill.

The blending of sculpture and photography is not inherently new, but Ryan Oskin’s installation is starting to suggest what might be coming next for photography. The work is made up of pictures that I can’t always figure out, printed with high contrast in blue, making them look like experimental architectural drawings. The images are printed on vinyl and hung by blue bungee ties which lends a materiality to the work, which feels both practical and the kind of thing you would find on a construction site.

The best part of the work is that the installation turns the gallery into an almost untraversable web of blue. When you walk in the door, the space looks like a flat layering of blue. Stepping inside, the installation quickly becomes a wonderful three-dimensional piece, giving the impression that you have crawled inside a photo collage of layered images. The work isn’t unprecedented and in the long run might feel of the time, but it is hard to ignore that Oskin is successfully pushing the medium forward by making interesting looking work.

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Rubber Factory (29C Ludlow St., Btw. Hester & CanalSts.)