“captured”

January 9 – 28 2024

Chroma Fine Arts Gallery’s new exhibition, Captured, running through January 28, features the work of three master photographers. The artists – Rita Baunok, Bruce Dunbar and Arnold Kastenbaum – reflect a range of photographic practices and modes of creating a unique moment captured in time. Join the artists in the Gallery for an opening reception on Saturday, January 13 from 3:00 – 7:00pm.

Rita Baunok is a Hungarian-born American photographer based in Katonah; she also directs the exhibition program for Chroma Fine Arts Gallery. In this exhibition, Baunok showcases work from her Symphony No.2 series, which was inspired by a summertime Brahms concert at Caramoor. “Every movement of the conductor was reciprocated in the playful dance of the wrinkles on the back of his suit.” The desire to capture that “magical scene” lingered for weeks until Maestro Joel Freedman agreed to conduct the same symphony under studio lights and the lens of her 35mm single reflex camera. As the images developed, she combined the emergent chords into musical phrases by layering them in Photoshop and the body of work fell into place. “I was dancing in my studio,” Baunok recalled.

Bruce Dunbar is a photographic artist who is interested in examining the various processes of photography. His work with combining photographic processes and mixed media is an attempt at capturing an impression, an inescapable essence of what once was, the invisible force through which matter changes – the state of flux in which all organic matter is caught. Dunbar excels at pushing the boundaries of experimental photography to poetic effect. His minimal compositions have soft tonalities and a depth of atmosphere. Bringing a sensitive eye and propensity for unconventional techniques, Dunbar’s work has a rich, magical quality. On display are photographs from two new series: Chromatic Light and Woodland Movement, wherein Dunbar captures impressions of fleeting natural phenomena.

Arnold Kastenbaum is a contemporary film-based artist based in New York City. A master printer working exclusively in film and gelatin silver prints his goal is to create a sense of surprise at seeing a simple object in a new way. He takes a cue from Mies van der Rohe who once noted that, “an interesting plainness is the most difficult and precious thing to achieve.” Under Kastenbaum’s skilled photographic treatment, banal architectural objects are elevated to sweeping and refined compositional iterations. Stairs, elevators, lamps, doors, elevator walls and building facades are utterly transformed to an evocative and lyrical simplicity of form. Kastenbaum’s work makes “no attempt to depict an object as it naturally appears. The goal is to create a new object that did not exist before. The photograph itself becomes the object without regard to the subject matter.”

Artists:
Rita Baunok
Bruce Dunbar
Arnold Kastenbaum