QUESTIONS FILL THE FORGE

Which better earns our trust, the camera or the paintbrush? The works of Maya Loomis, currently on display at the Forge Gallery, explore this quandary with a great deal of panache. Take the centerpiece of the show here, which documents the Lopez-Wood fight of a decade ago. Loomis's photographs spotlight Lopez. They have no choice. His magnetism and power are indisputable. He tracks Wood around the ring like a lion stalking its prey. The larger man, Wood, shows smaller to the lens, to the point where when Lopez finally puts him on the floor, viewers will be forgiven for thinking that he has already been felled three or four frames previous. Loomis's paintings, by contrast, depict a stiffening conflict in which Wood gains both stature and tragic grandeur over the course of the rounds. He is more than a sacrificial lamb. He is an aspirant, fire in his eyes, almost reaching his adversary with his jab. When he falls, he does justice to the canvas, in both senses, so vigorously that the equivoque can be forgiven. Are we to jump to the conclusion that Loomis, the painter, engages in a wishful thinking that Loomis, the photographer, repudiates? Or are we to question the accuracy of the so-called documentary artifact, the image directed to film and then made visible by chemical process? Put another way: which Loomis, as it were, throws the knockout punch? Certainly, it is distressing to be stranded between the two parallel sets, and the question carries over to Loomis's other works, which use the same strategy of discrepancy to portray scenes from horse races, tent revivals, and corporate board meetings. Questions fill the Forge, and the answers are nowhere to be found, unless a sharp eye manages to locate the square white card near the front of the gallery, smaller than either the photographs or the paintings. It is a notice of full disclosure: “All events represented in these photographs and paintings, from the Lopez-Wood fight to the Stiles Corporation shareholders meeting, from the Verbena Stakes to the Holiness Hurricane, were invented wholesale by Loomis, who was in turn invented by the author Laura Morris, a pseudonym.” Most attendees never see this card, and just enjoy the show.

©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas