Plains of Abraham

Skylight Gallery is pleased to announce its exhibition of Charles Johnstone’s Route 22 series of photographs.

Route 22 is a 341-mile state highway that runs north from the Bronx in New York City to just shy of the Canadian border. Over the past five years, Charles Johnstone has traveled—and photographed—Route 22 along its entirety, as it navigates through congested city blocks, traverses suburban enclaves, rolls past horse and dairy farms, skirts the eastern edge of the Adirondack Mountains, and meanders near the shores of Lake Champlain. Rather than depict sweeping vistas or bucolic landscapes, the twelve images on view at Skylight Gallery focus on individual structures that Johnstone discovered along this primarily rural, two-lane road.

Johnstone’s photographs are straightforward, his subjects singular: a shuttered barn, a bait shop, a gas station, a laundromat. It is appropriate that automobiles appear in some pictures, although they are invariably idle and empty. Other images are more evocative, such as a skewed sign for the Justice of the Peace posted next to a cornfield or a basketball hoop marooned on a grassy lawn. There is also a photograph of a giant American flag displayed near a red barn—a seemingly iconic image of small-town U.S.A.

The images in this exhibition are all exterior shots, most taken from a strict frontal position. Johnstone used a handheld 6 x 6 cm camera to frame his pictures and attain his signature square format. While a photograph of a truck parked alongside a gas pump implies the presence of a person just beyond its borders, Johnstone is careful to exclude people from his scenes. He invites viewers instead to focus on the subtleties of composition, on the formal relationships of shape, pattern, color, and geometry.

Johnstone captures moments of stillness and unassuming beauty. The foreground parking lot in Laundromat is wet with rain from a passing storm; viewers can almost smell the cool water on the dark asphalt. In Chevrolet, a blue pickup truck anchors a wall of white “cinderblock” siding. Bait is the most charming image in the series, with its impossible-to-reach mailbox, its archaic TV antennae, and numerous hand-painted signs. These quiet compositions convey none of the speed or stress of modern-day road travel. Johnstone’s photographs along Route 22 form a thoughtful picture of rural architecture in upstate New York.

-text by Ellen J. Keiter
Curator of Contemporary Art, Katonah Museum of Art

Skylight Gallery was founded by Mary Buschman. Gallery hours are Wed-Mon. from 11 to 5 pm. For further information, please contact the gallery at (518) 576-9208.

Boreas Pond

White Barn