Postmasters Gallery is pleased to present "Sheltered Life"- an exhibition of new photographs, drawings and video installation by Anthony Goicolea - April 9 - may 7, 2005.This will be the artist's first show with Postmasters. A large survey exhibition of his works is currently on view at the Arizona State University Museum of Art in Tempe, AZ.

As in his past works Goicolea uses photography, drawing, and video as different components of exploring the same narrative territory. "Sheltered Life" is a series of digitally constructed photographs which depicts fairytale-like, timeless places inhabited by contemporary characters.

All of the landscapes are punctuated with alternative makeshift living spaces which are made up of, as well as incorporated into, the surrounding environment. Many of the figures in the photos are reduced in size and are almost swallowed by their surroundings. The characters are often masked, hooded, or seen from the back in order to preserve their identity. They operate as a single unit, living in situations that simultaneously reference backyard playdates and hippie communes, as well as detainment camps and disaster relief areas. Their living arrangements and concealed identities cement their status as outcasts or refugees from society. The composed wooded scenes depicted in many of the photos are bisected into two halves and are often times seen as a cross-section of themselves. In images like "Ice Storm," or "Dead Tree Forest" the bottom half of the photo is relegated to a violent underworld of roots, dirt, rock, and earth which are stratified into a multilayered platform or stage on which scenes are acted out. The shelters which inhabit the photos range in form from tree houses, lean-to's, and caves, to cardboard forts or dilapidated barns. Their playfulness undermines the sort of desperate haphazard construction and deeper desire to migrate or live on the outside of communities.

IMAGES :
Left to right, from top :

Tree Dwellers, 2004
Photograph, C-print, mounted and laminated, edition of 9
72 inches high x 98 inches wide
Dead Tree Forest, 2005
Photograph, C-print, mounted and laminated, edition of 9
72 X 60 inches
Cave, 2005
Photograph, C-print, mounted and laminated, edition of 9
60 X 41 inches
Still Life with Pig, 2005
Photograph, C-print, mounted and laminated, edition of 9
40 x 60 inches



"Drawings" by Anthony Goicolea - a limited edition book published by Twin Palms Press will be pre- released concurently with the exhibition and available at Postmasters.