St. Louis Post-Dispatch
October 20, 1994

EMULSION MEDIA II: ANOTHER EXPOSURE
TO ALTERNATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY

By Robert W. Duffy

The Martin Schweig Gallery, 4658 Maryland Avenue, through Oct. 29
When the Martin Schweig Gallery mounted a show of experimental uses of photography last year, it started a tradition. The '93 show turned out to be exciting, so much so that the gallery decided to take on the the subject this year. It's even better the second time around.

The artist whose work was the best of show last year takes the honors again. He is Dan Gualdoni. Gualdoni uses the goat for its visual, metaphorical and allegorical qualities, and the work is as brilliant as it is disquieting. Gualdoni's erotic self-portrait as a satyr, in which he holds morel mushrooms to form his horns, is knock-out.
Dan Younger uses the computer - Adobe Photoshop software program specifically - to produce composite photographs that launch him and members of his family into surreal, imaginary space-age situations. The pictures are seamlessly produced and are powerful illusions. Although they seem funny or nostalgic at first, after looking at them they also become bizarre, complex and unsettling.

Nancy Exarhu's paintings and works on paper resonate with memories of her native Greece and, the viewer suspects, memories of members of her family. The works on paper are tightly composed and richly textured. The paintings (which incorporate photographic images) are ambitious and have a Cy Twombly-like quality to them.

Amanda Zaslow's work is so personal and revealing that one sometimes feels he should look away - as if he has accidentally seen something extraordinarily private. Photographs - all untitled, all of a young woman's face - have been burned, bound up or otherwise distressed.

Like Younger's pictures, Carol Corey's photographs have a nostalgic quality, and some of them have an infectious exuberance. Anthony Thompson's mixed media objects have a certain elegance, but they carry enigma into incomprehensibility, and come off as decorative rather than serious.

Copyright 1994 St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Record Number: 9410190149