Holly Lynton - Mean Ceiling

Using lush landscapes as settings for photographs and video, Holly Lynton’s new body of work continues to examine the space between play and danger. Lynton creates beautifully fluid narratives that compel the viewer to question whether the situations are pleasurable, menacing, or perhaps both. Lynton’s first video work utilizes her personal history as a template for a discussion about the fluid nature of roles and identity. A visually seductive use of abstraction—tightly cropped images of water, goldfish feeding, adults swimming—plays against an ambiguous narrative that casts doubt on the innocence of childhood play. In her new photographs, Lynton references elements associated with outdoor play as a means to explore how we “endure” fun. She employs herself as the sole figure situated prominently in seasonal landscapes such as snow, leaves and sand. In reality, these “natural” settings are staged for the camera as a specific investigation of Lynton’s interest in control and idealized environments. Both her photographs and video call into question our assumptions about the environment, its plasticity and our assertion over it. Pressetext

Holly Lynton - Mean Ceiling