Constructive Criticism

Smart Centre #3 and The Home Depot

photographs, 2008
From the series Retail
Susan Dobson

“The architecture that I photograph provides an apt metaphor for consumer culture,” explains Dobson, who digitally fills in the shape of big retail outlets with grey for her landscapes. “It’s mass-produced, provisional in its fabrication, has a limited lifespan and is easily replaced.”

Passenger

(stills), video projection, 2004
Jutta Strohmaier

For Passenger, Strohmaier photographed the same spot every minute for three days. “The private, insular room opens up to the outside world under certain light conditions, blurring the boundaries between the inner and outer worlds,” she explains. “It’s like looking out the window of an airplane – time and space pass by.”

Untitled (Judd)

photograph, 2008
Lynne Cohen

Courtesy of Lynne Cohen and Olga Korper Gallery

Cohen’s stark photographs of empty institutional interior spaces expose the inner workings of Western society. “My photographs tend to bring out ambiguities and contradictions, and in this picture I am struck by how the wall decoration looks like a low-budget version of a work by Donald Judd,” she says.