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Jessica Labatte
As we browse her work, we can imagine Jessica Labatte browsing supermarket aisles. The Chicago artist has an eye for ordinary objects overflowing with color—rolls of rainbow duct tape, crinkled plastic wrap—as well as trashy materials such as a matte gray plastic lawn chair and bland carpeting.
“Lazy Shadows” reflects Labatte’s fascination with the aesthetic qualities of plasticky consumer objects and the illusory aspect of photography. Her photos fall into two categories: heaps of alley finds photographed to scale, like Chasing the Carrot, and smaller high-contrast still lifes arranged against sterile white backgrounds resembling clean rooms. The latter group includes Radiant Composition, in which neon yellows and oranges ping-pong between viewers’ eyes and the depthless white background—a stimulating workout for those bored by less creative still-life photography.
Linear Flexing demonstrates how Labatte can also use her camera lens to create illusions. The photo’s Styrofoam cups and sugar cubes cast the barest hint of shadows, so that they appear almost two-dimensional. In The Alignment (pictured), the artist arranges shards of mirrors to reflect a scattering of objects outside the photograph’s frame. Only a well-trained eye could orchestrate such a precise composition. Introducing mirrors allows Labatte to bring her two compositional styles together, manipulating perspective, shadow and shapes at a more literal level. We hope she continues exploring in this direction.
