Grant Gill’s ‘Glowing Images’ at Alice Wilds

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It’s fitting that Grant Gill’s current show, “Glowing Images” took to the walls at the Alice Wilds in late June, just on the other side of the solstice. As a show of photography, it’s essentially an embodiment of the mechanics of light. But it is also of and about light, not to mention wholly illuminating. But more than anything else, the show considers light as something essential; an artistic equivalent to Einstein’s General Relativity, perhaps, where light, magic and metaphysics are all part of the same interchangeable equation. 

The glow of angular light was palpable from the moment I entered the space. It was late afternoon and light was pouring in, but what I sensed was coming from the works on the wall, not from the cosmos. Light, the subject, the protagonist of the show, along with what are essentially cameos from solid objects, summoned me towards individual works. Some of these scenes feel exceedingly personal, others less so. Sam on Our Tenth Sun verges on voyeuristic. The work depicts a handsome young man clothed only in a coat of bubbles and the warmest amber light any Hudson River School painter could dream up. Sam stares down slightly to our 5 o’clock, his brow a little stern, half in shadow, half in glowing twilight. The pose and contemplative gaze would feel menacing if the tone wasn’t so ethereal and calming. Either way, physics and metaphysics are locked in tension. 

Nearby, Untitled (Shell) serves up ambiguously spiritual content that finally heads in another direction. The work features a subject in repose with eyes closed and arms folded on his chest. A hand entering from out of frame on the left gently places a shell on his sternum. Such a composition would read as a rite or religious ritual if we didn’t know better. Other the works in the show however offer context in their casualness. Nexus Site (Orange Still-Life II), for example, shows us an orange on a table with several other elements slightly out of focus. Quite a different scene than the suggestive figures, but what each of the works share is the richest and most painterly light imaginable. So it’s clearly not God, or man, or fruit, that resounds, it’s light itself. 

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From Light to Color

But of course, it’s light as all those other things, too. Light is the constant, which begets the color, which begets the moment, which color our memories and imaginations. This telescoping thought had me recall Aristotle’s paradox about time as he expressed it in “The Physics.” He notes that our notion of the fourth dimension consists of the past which no longer exists, and the future which doesn’t exist yet, so any possibility of the present seems vanishingly impossible, or at least paradoxical. It’s a headscratcher, but one that Gill’s camera dispenses with easily even if our minds can’t. The light endures as surely as human notions of pasts retreat, and stubborn promises of futures turn up their collars.

In this light, with this light, Gill’s camera becomes a surrogate consciousness in a plaintive attempt to capture the fleeting magic of our evanescent experiences and destabilized realities. Interestingly, he states of his own practice that it “depends on photographs to be more than just one thing—a truth or a lie, a memory or fantasy, both possible and impossible. I am interested in wrapping up the language of photography in a way that produces a moment of magic; to visualize the struggle of desperately wanting the impossible to be real.” I don’t think I could say it any better myself. But neither of us can put it any clearer than Gill does in so many glowing images.

Openings

July 16 – July 22, 2023

Milwaukee Art Museum

  • Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio
  • Sunday, July 16, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

  • Drop-In Tour: Architecture and Collection Highlights
  • Sunday, July 16, 2–3 p.m.

Lynden Sculpture Garden 

La Gente

  • Artist Talk Series: Grant Writing Workshop
  • Tuesday, Jul 18, 5–7 p.m.

Warehouse Art Museum

  • Noon Hour Curator's Tour with Melanie Herzog
  • Wednesday, July 19, 12 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

  • Curator Conversation and Reception: “Scandinavian Design and the United States”
  • Wednesday, July 19, 5:30–8 p.m.

Haggerty Museum of Art

  • 2023 Annual Meeting and Happy Hour (in-person, tickets $45, or via Zoom at no charge)
  • Wednesday, July 19, 6–8 p.m.

Lynden Sculpture Garden

  • Indigo Dyeing with Arianne King Comer
  • (Free: register at lyndensculpturegarden.org)
  • Wednesday, July 20, 10:30 a.m.–3:30 p.m.

Art Therapy Collective

  • Pop-Up Open Studio
  • Wednesday, July 19th, 3–5 p.m. 

Charles Allis Museum

  • Opening Reception for T.J. Dedeuax, "Talk Back: The Estate"
  • Thursday, July 20, 6–8 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

  • Gallery Talk: “Scandinavian Design and the United States”
  • Thursday, July 20, 12–1 p.m.

Art Therapy House, Brown Deer

  • Open Studio Tour
  • Friday July 21, 4–8 p.m.

Gallery Night MKE 

Milwaukee Art Museum

  • Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio
  • Saturday, July 22, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Gallery Day MKE 

Alice Wilds

  • Gallery Tour with Grant Gill for his exhibition Glowing Images
  • Saturday, July 22, 1 p.m.

Friends of the Shepherd

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Milwaukee Art Museum

  • Story Time in the Galleries
  • Saturday, July 22, 10:30–11:30 a.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

  • Drop-In Art Making: Kohl’s Art Studio
  • Saturday, July 22, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.

Milwaukee Art Museum

  • Drop-In Tour: Architecture and Collection Highlights
  • Saturday, July 22, 2–3 p.m.

Ap3 Gallery Nina at House of Rad

  • Artist Gallery Talk
  • Saturday, July 22, 2 p.m.

Saint Kate–the Arts Hotel

  • AIR Time, Art and Studio Tour
  • Cocktail and studio tour with artist Jeff Zimpel
  • Saturday, July 22, 5 p.m.