Systematic Compositions are artful constructions of hypnotizing scenes depicting empires, as well as social achievements on a smaller, human scale, in a state of ruin. More specifically, these configurations come to represent very personal moments in the artist’s and viewer’s life when he or she wrestles with, or surrenders to, the impermanence of history, the idea of order and control as a social construct, and the fact of disorder, decline, and death.
Photographer Bart Synowiec challenges viewers to make peace with disruptive imagery that captures the friction between opposing forces in a single moment in time. He constructs spectacles of destruction; he designs with discord, harnessing chaos with math, speaking of community with abandonment and loss, and addressing the intersection of artistic intent and viewer readings with respect and subtlety. Is there ultimately a feeling of harmony or distress? Where some feel Synowiec’s power to finesse our perceptions of structure and balance has a calming effect, others are more relieved by the spaces in which there is discernable disagreement with Synowiec’s attempt.
The stylized presentation of Synowiec’s viewpoint contrasts with the random ways he stumbled upon his subjects. Stories layer upon stories, and Synowiec is both unknowing player and omniscient narrator in settings he both finds and shapes.
It’s hard to believe that each photograph and its situation is simply a product of time. It’s equally difficult to imagine that these scenarios are destined to be forgotten, or at least they were before Synowiec came in with a camera.
We live in a state of modern ruins, and Synowiec’s work evokes our reactions to it. His masterful approach to the final, symmetrical image leaves no detail undocumented and suggests that the viewer can seek stillness and comfort in therepeating patterns. Systematic Compositions invites us to witness history in progress, a world in a constant state of motion, with some degree of manipulation and an act of compromise between eye and mind.
Copyright © Antoinette Di Michele, 2013.
Image Courtesy of Cecilia Au, 2013.