Alfred Gescheidt at Higher Pictures

Upon walking into Higher Pictures, the only thing I knew about Alfred Gescheidt was that I had never heard of him. Walking into a gallery with little to no knowledge of an artist is not a unique experience for me, but what is rare is how much I enjoyed the work. Often it seems to me that if a gallery shows work by a little known artist, it is often because the artist is newly “discovered” and the work itself often seems too thought out, too serious, and difficult to enjoy if you experience it without knowledge of the artist and his/her intention behind the work. In Gescheidt’s work, on the other hand, each picture is a sly and subtle wink at the viewer, urging them to be entertained by his visualizations of “walking on pins and needles” in the image of a woman teetering on the head of a pin, the reinterpretation of what are bodies are made up of, in a silhouette of a man and a woman collaged with images of salt and water and muscle builders, a baby in wedding clothes in “Young Bride”. Come on, Gescheidt’s images say, have as much fun with these as I did. While his work can be light and entertaining on an individual scale, many of his images also have a distinct tone regarding either politics or culture. A political example is “Politics Make Strange Bedfellows” and the untitled image in which a clenched fist, resembling the “fight the power” gesture, is overlay with an American 10 dollar bill. His graphic style and image combination allows the audience to interpret each image differently, but the possible interpretations are not infinite. It is perhaps the definitiveness of these images which appeals to me as opposed to the art of newer, younger artists, who often are so afraid of their message that they overload their art with vagaries, allowing the audience to speculate the meaning of the piece indefinitely. Or perhaps I simply felt liberated by the surprise of walking into a gallery to see the untitled image of a snake emerging from the fly of someone’s pants. It is rare that an artist allows you to look at their work, get it, enjoy it, and move on, but perhaps that is the key, as that which is rare is also memorable. All I know is what I thought; trouser snake. Hahaha.