Also mentioned in Time Out #412 Aug 21, 2003 and Brooklyn Free Press 1/8 page, August 8.
Summer's coolest photographs?
STATEN
ISLAND ADVANCE / ARTS & IDEAS
Sunday August 03, 2003
Full color, Front page (Text Only Shown Here)
By Michael J. Fressola
Searching for perfect
coolness?
Check out Frank Lekstutis' photo exhibit, 'Ice Machines,' in DUMBO.
How could there be anything
cooler than "Ice Machines,"
a 13-piece color series by Island-based photographer Frank Lekstutis
that's chilling at Frameworks in Dumbo through the end August.
For reasons that aren't
always clear as commercial ice
(which attains a pristine level of clarity you cannot achieve in your home
ice-maker),
Lekstutis has been taking photographs of those refrigerator-like ice-chests
sitting near stores and cheesy motels for 25 years now.
"Crystal Clear"
and "Serve Yourself!" say the encouraging signs on some (but not
all) machines.
These innocuous-seeming conveniences, so familiar and numerous in suburban
and rural places,
may not be final entries on a list of photographic possibilities,
but they are down towards the end. Right? After hairballs and old shoe laces?
Lekstutis, however, knows
that there are no small subjects, just small photographers.
The photographs are handsomely composed and when they've been manipulated
(mostly it's a matter of artful blurriness), it's done reasonably.
A severely-rear-ended
Impala sits next to one larger-than-average cabinet,
"Barely nicked it" is the caption.
The photographer found ice machines and cruise ships together
for a photograph with a palpable coolness.
Another, titled "Titanic" has the machine, but suggests the disaster.
"Point Pleasant" in which a machine sits outside a little cedar-shake
place,
is somehow brave and touching.
"Ice Machines"
with all works at 13 by 19 inches is bigger than its subject,
which is what art is supposed to do.
Frameworks, at 81 Washington
St., is a small street-level brick-walled frame shop,
in one of the handsome old DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan (and) Brooklyn
Overpasses)
with a modest amount of wallspace for changing shows.
It is just a few blocks
from the Fulton Landing, just steps from the Brooklyn Bridge
and one of the most spectacular parks in the city.
And if "Ice Machines"
has led to thoughts of well, ice, and ice cream, then look no further.
Some experts say that the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory, right there in Fulton
park,
makes the best ice cream in the city.
But the Egger's and Sedutto factions may have their own ideas.
Hours at Frameworks for
"Ice Machines" are
Monday through Friday, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.