The Dumpster Sublime

Crumbling industrial buildings, rusting infrastructure and all manner of urban decay:  Western New York has plenty of it.  At least since Charles Burchfield's eerie renditions of factories and Victorian houses in bleak, sooty landscapes, artists have been finding aesthetic value - a certain sense of sublimity - in the reality of the Rust Belt.  Dumpsters and Other Strangers II, an exhibition of photographs by Robert Schulman opening at CEPA Gallery this weekend, features elegant photographic abstractions of Western New York's "vintage" industrial and architectural assets.

Schulman, a pediatrician and prolific photographer, finds our Rust Belt heritage worth preserving.  He sees both harmony and dissonance in it, saying that "[his] photos, poetic jazz-like abstractions, try to capture the beauty of what may soon be gone."  This mission of documenting the antiquated industrial is paralleled by Bruce Jackson's American Chartres: Buffalo Waterfront Elevators, now on view at the UB Anderson Gallery.

Dumpsters and Other Strangers II is one of four exhibitions opening at CEPA this Saturday, 7 - 10 PM.  The exhibition will be on view through March 19, 2011.