RAYMOND MEEKS
For a show titled “Topsoil,” Meeks photographed freshly turned earth from an angle so
low that he might have been crawling on the ground among the stones and plowed-under
corn. Printed in black-and-white, often on vellum or film that has been coated with wax,
the images are slightly fogged but rich, tactile, and intensely felt. Meeks isn’t sentimental,
but he clearly respects this well-worked field and the life that it supports. Pictures of his
children and other details of the landscape round out the show (as do several extraordinary
artist’s books), but the humble, crude soil is its dark star. Through March 29. (Dwan,
24 W. 57th St. 212-315-0065.) ~Vince Aletti.  The New Yorker

Raymond Meeks
One floor above the Jeff Wall exhibit, Meeks's photos also capture subjects going unconcernedly about their business, but these are crows, pecking through rotting plants strewn over clotted ground. The birds feel like harbingers of grief; the mood has much to do with Meeks's elaborate process of shooting black-and-white film and then making prints on vellum coated with wax and acrylic, creating a very faint and mysterious cataract between image and viewer. This technique transforms a crow flapping over irrigation pipes mounted on broad steel wheels into a haunting vision of cannons in some forgotten Gettysburg. One dramatic composition juxtaposes a crow, partially cut off by the top edge, flying past a collapsing sunflower stalk, the black, turgid earth looming up from the foreground like a freshly turned grave. Candace Dwan, 24 W 57th, 212-315-0065. Through March 29.
~R.C. Baker  The Village Voice