Whimsy in the Water
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Children were giggling at the 41 photographs in Arthur Tress’s “Fish Tank Sonata,” chosen from the 71 images collected in his book of the same name. Tress creates fanciful still lifes by arranging props inside an antique fish tank, which he hauls to various locations to photograph. He’s divided his images into five sections and accompanies each print with a goofy, playful poem. Collectively they tell a story: guided by a red snapper “spirit fish,” a fisherman gains insight into everything from the “rise and fall of civilizations” to the “many aspects of love.” In Turtle Pond, Central Park, New York City, two silly-looking rubber frogs and a pond behind the tank illustrate how “sea creatures moved onto land”; in front of the frogs is a human couple dancing, showing one result of the evolutionary process. Usually Tress’s locations are near a body of water–a reflecting pool at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Pacific Ocean in California, where Tress lives. The objects come from flea markets and thrift stores near the sites of the photos–and the water in the tank comes from the sites too.
A few photos in the fifth section decry pollution. East River, New York City shows Tress’s tank in front of a smoke-spewing power plant on the opposite shore, and two of three skulls in the tank have glowing eyes. The poem reads in part: “The fisherman saw that humankind / Would rapidly follow in decline.” Since much of the show appears to celebrate plastic kitsch and artificial constructions, it seems odd to point a finger at polluters–they’re simply fulfilling the taste for manufactured excess these photos celebrate.
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