What happens when Albany's best dressed man takes off his clothes in the name of art? We'll soon find out. If you happen to be planning a visit to New York's capital city next month, you'll want to be sure to stop by the Romaine Brooks Gallery where blogger/photographer/writer Alan Bennett Ilagan will present his first solo photography exhibition.
The exhibit titled "The Eye of the Ego" is a series of self-portraiture in which Ilagan promises to explore themes such as self-reflection, self-criticism, and the temptation of vanity.
"This exhibit revels in the ego. Self-portraiture is often seen as the most blatant form of vanity. However, vanity seems like too easy an explanation, a dismissal of a powerful art form, a tradition that goes back centuries. From the most ancient hieroglyphics to our modern-day MySpace pages, we are a species that has always searched out different ways to represent ourselves, to leave an impression behind, to shout out, 'I was here!'" as Ilagan describes in his artist's statement.
Though Ilagan has been taking photographs since 1991, it was only after working with photographers Steven Underhill and Dennis Dean that he was inspired to seriously explore the art form. After being voted Albany's Best-Dressed Man by the readers of the Times Union, he ironically doesn't don much for his self-portraits, and such intimate self-exposure adds an element of self-preservation to the exhibition, one that goes hand-in-hand with the theme of the ego. There's a thrilling tension between artist and his ego, and the resulting clash reverberates throughout the journey - a trajectory that begins is a decidedly singular, self-obsessed fashion and evolves to a universal, all-encompassing level.
WHO: Alan Bennett Ilagan
WHAT: Solo Exhibition (Photography)
WHERE: Romaine Brooks Gallery Capital District Gay & Lesbian Community Center 332 Hudson Avenue, Albany, NY 12210
WHEN: Opening Reception September 5, 2008 ~ 5-9 PM (and running throughout the month)
