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  3. Monday, May 13, 2024

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Exhibitions

The Photographs of Dominic Rouse

  • Dominic Rouse (British), The cunning of unreason, 2005. Archival Epson Ultrachrome K3 Pigment Ink Print.

  • Dominic Rouse (British), Angeline, 2002. Archival Epson Ultrachrome K3 pigment print. In his work, Rouse often treats the the subject as a object of purity, innocence, and perhaps a victim. For Angeline, he has put this blindfolded girl in the desolate backdrop of a hotel in Cambodia as she is ready to step on a piece of broken glass, suggesting tension with an icon of virtue. Taking the title from a John Martin song, Rouse states that the work is a "lament for lost innocence."

  • Dominic Rouse (British), Come to mother, 2000. Toned Silver Gelatin Print.

  • Dominic Rouse (British), Dance for no-one, 2001. Archival Epson Ultrachrome K3 pigment ink print. In this surreal image, the artist has stripped the performer of her audience. Rouse was fascinated by the idea that the dancer's formal training always occurs in private and that the profession demands the constant risk of injury. Inspired by a modernization effort from the Catholic church in the sixties, Rouse found the sacred to be inconsistent with this new endeavor to secularize tradition. He attempts to reconcile these two elements with the dancer who, mirroring that sacred world, may "illustrate those acts of kindness, acts of love that go unnoticed."

  • Dominic Rouse (British), Don’t walk away Rene, 2001. Toned Silver Gelatin Print.

  • Dominic Rouse (British), Ecce Homo, 2002. Archival Epson Ultrachrome K3 pigment ink print. In a trip to Cambodia in 2002, Rouse was inspired by the shocking presence of the former S-21 Khmer Rouge interrogation prison. On the first two visits to the facility, the artist could not photograph the "almost sacred" nature of the building. Finally on his last visit, he was able to document this distressing yet "ordinary" presence of the various torture rooms in the building. The title, a statement uttered by Pontius Pilate after the flagellation of Christ meaning "Behold the Man," suggests that Ecce Homo is "an attempt to portray our humanity and our enduring lack of it."

  • Dominic Rouse (British), Man eaten alive by chest of drawers whilst searching for a missing sock, 1996. Toned Silver Gelatin Print.

  • Dominic Rouse (British), Reasons for attendance, 2006. Archival Epson Ultrachrome K3 Pigment Ink Print.

  • Dominic Rouse (British), To be or not to be, 2000. Toned Silver Gelatin Print.

  • Dominic Rouse (British), Under construction, 2005. Archival Epson Ultrachrome K3 Pigment Ink Print.

  • Dominic Rouse (British), Vacancy, 2005. Archival Epson Ultrachrome K3 Pigment Ink Print.

About the Exhibition

Fiction is the lie that tells the truth.
Dreams are a reality that open windows onto a mystery.

Dominic Rouse, a contemporary digital photographer from England – now living in Thailand, likes to make images where illusion and reality overlap. His photographs put him in aesthetic relationship to Magritte, Dali, Ernst, Uelsmann, Arthur Tress and Maggie Taylor who are also surreal artists whose images are entertaining, visually dramatic and dream-like.

Rouse’s photographs are technically accomplished and invite us, even compel us, into his vivid imagination where he addresses emotional interiors such as love and loss, meaning and chaos, life and death, fears and desires, and religion and superstition. His images, rich in hypnotic hauntings, have somber tones and dark undertows. He works the relationship of Spirit to Flesh. His erotic images are mysteriously beautiful but he can also be a spiritual scare-maker.

Sometimes his illusory, staged vision makes us feel like he is a magician hiding tricks up his sleeve and at other moments he is Freud’s stage director making representations of unconscious universal fantasies.

Often, the answer to a question is a better question. There is no doubt, Rouse’s beautifully executed photographs will leave you questioning.

—Keith Auerbach, Pyro Gallery, November 2008

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