JTF (just the facts): A total of 11 color photographs, framed in white and unmatted, and hung in the single room gallery space. All of the prints are archival pigment prints. The images come in two sizes: 15×12 in editions of 8, and 35×44 in editions of 6. (Installation shots at right.)
Comments/Context: David Nadel’s photographs of snow bound Montana forests reduce the landscape to a set of minimalist gestures, where charred tree trunks become dark vertical lines against the vast expanse of white. His pictures are like abstract exercises in linear geometry, executed with the delicacy of a dry point etching.

At one level, there is something simple and decorative about this work; the effects of powerful burning have been softened, turned into muted line drawings. What I like better is to consider the concept of using the land as a basis for radical abstraction, and to see how different photographers have stripped away context in landscape to highlight its nuances of pattern and form.

My favorite image in the show is Burn #2; it’s on the right in the in the middle installation shot. I liked the busy right angle intersection of perpendicular lines formed by the vertical trunks and the fallen logs.
Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
Transit Hub:
- Review: Wall Street Journal (here, scroll down)
Through March 26th