Gene Parulis

Perhaps it is my status as a Gemini that goes part of the way in explaining the divergent approaches my photography takes and sheds light on the content and treatment of the images on display here. I work comfortably in both realist and surrealist worlds and find each to be inspiring. In the two scenes from Guangzhou, China, my intention was to offer a vivid sense of place, in this case, the narrow lanes of the Xiaobei district, dark and medieval but with all the improvised, miraculously functional tangle of the twenty-first century. The images question how we human beings create and maintain these seemingly impossible densities of congregation. The three surrealist images in this exhibit are completely different ways of perceiving. Since childhood I’ve been intrigued by the idea of a parallel universe, something I could readily observe in mirrors and windows, where one world reflects the other and both, if held in a unified vision, are altered. I wanted to venture into the implicit “what if?” of the alternative side of the looking-glass and see what is there. What continues to fascinate me is the rich seam, the liminal zone where the images coalesce. When parallel patterns meet, their threshold of interpenetration opens into wonderfully strange new worlds, surprising, arresting, haunting, yet fundamentally satisfying.

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