Todd Eberle

This exhibit invites us to look into the relationship between “fine” and “commercial” art, or as its insightful catalog essay suggests, between “picture” and “illustration” in photography. Fashion and documentary work may raise similar issues, but architecture, with its geometries and repetition, makes it an infinite resource for vivid displays of compositional expertise.

Architecture also fosters an eye for detail that is at the core not only of photography but of much visual art. It’s slightly problematic that the graphic-design industry has co-opted this style to provide glamour and drama to brochures and advertising hawking real estate. In a commercial context, is the photography “art” or just “arty”?

The images here are distinctly art: Eberle (who also does commercial photography) offers his meditations on the architectural grid with large-scale close-up shots of interconnected rectangular elements in a variety of buildings—from early works (Unity Temple) to more current neo-Miesian efforts (MoMA). While much photographic detail imagery plays with the 3-D quality of the built environment, Eberle’s work is unique in treating the grid as a flat plane, so that the architectural elements become pure examples of abstraction. Unless you look at the wall labels, you are probably unaware that you are mostly looking at a series of ceiling details. In many ways, these photos are a testament to the ongoing relevance of Miesian minimalism in both contemporary art and architecture.—Philip Berger