Margaret Evangeline
William Brovelli

Night

November 22 - December 27, 2008

Mark Kessell’s first solo exhibition at Kim Foster Gallery is from his series of (mostly) blind children titled To Be Determined. Presented as large color prints made from his original daguerreotypes, Kessell shows us children in various expressive, animated and subtly disturbing states. In the deft hands of this former physician, his subjects are a literal and metaphorical exploration of personality development.

In pursuit of these images, Kessell obtained written consent from parents of over 200 children at a school for the blind. But he pointedly advises the viewer that not all the children in this series are blind, leaving us to doubt the evidence of our own eyes. To Be Determined is a reflection on the nature of sight and how it - or its absence - shapes an individual’s identity. “My art offers no conclusions about the nature of human identity, as I myself have none,” Kessell says, “I merely offer stimuli for the imagination.”

In documenting this extraordinary group of images, the artist writes: “In the absence of 90 percent of the sensory stimulation available to sighted children, blind children nevertheless develop a sense of identity. These children cannot look at themselves in a mirror, cannot see the faces of their parents, siblings or peers, and are unable to compare their own appearance with others. And yet, despite the profound difference in their experiences, blind children commonly develop into adults who have as much sense of self as other people.

Many, but not all the children in this series are blind. Those who appear blind are not necessarily. And those who appear sighted may in reality be sightless.”

Australian-born Mark Kessell inflects his work with the strong biological and scientific focus of his previous career in medicine. He challenges our assumptions of who and what we are.

Kessell has exhibited nationally at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, George Eastman House, International Center of Photography, Museum of Fine Arts of Houston and Princeton University. He has also shown and worked extensively in Germany and Switzerland.

For further information, please contact the gallery.