Andreas Jauss: As Things Are
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It’s not easy, or common, to withdraw emotion from what we see. Bad paintings are often drenched in sentiment, telegraphing a mood and nothing else. But the theme of Jauss’s images seems to be undercutting their potential for feeling, partly by withholding information. The works have numeric titles reflecting their chronology: first the year, then the number within the year they were made. 98-03 shows a fire in a ruined landscape (actually the result of riots in South Africa), but amid the various shades of gray the roughly painted flames don’t particularly stand out. 01-30 shows the white marble facade of Water Tower Place against the John Hancock building, and even though one structure is white and the other black and their designs aren’t at all alike, Jauss makes the window patterns look similar. Effacing their differences, he reduces the impact each has.
Other Jauss images do create momentary moods, but in the context of the whole show–hung in triple rows in the small space–they cancel one another out. For every claustrophobic narrow passageway there’s an aerial view of a city; for every modest home or sparse interior there’s an imposing mansion. Jauss seems to suggest that one shouldn’t wallow in ordinary sentiments because none has any lasting meaning. And frequently he chooses compositions–everything here is copied from a photograph, only some of which he took himself–so ordinary they deny meaning. 98-78 shows a truncated view of only the upper portion of a white house–so while a housefront can evoke human qualities, even resemble a face, this fragment reveals little.
