The figures and objects that seem to emerge gradually, like developing photographs, from the dark backgrounds of Troy Brauntuch’s chalk-on-cotton panels may have an ethereal quality, but their sources are hardly the stuff of dreams. Brauntuch, a member of the storied Pictures Generation that pioneered the critical appropriation of mass cultural iconography in the late 1970s, draws on everything from political misinformation to O.J. Simpson’s bloodied glove, operating on a large scale with the lightest of hands. The line between deconstructing a charged image and merely aestheticizing it is always a fine one, but while bordering on the tasteful, these pieces retain a vital ambiguity.
The exhibition’s opening picture, of a standing nude, is based on a photograph of a sculpture used in prewar Germany for propagandistic ends. Another image depicts Josef Thorak, Hilter’s favorite sculptor, at work. Elsewhere the aforementioned glove looms, nightmare-like, from six double panels, seeming to herald a still-deeper national plunge into racial strife.
Only a set of works derived from images of vintage evening wear by Charles James, which the artist photographed after dark during the 2014 Met exhibition of the designer’s work, gestures toward a more carefree world—though even here, it is one that struggles to break into the light.