After traveling extensively throughout North America, photographer Viktoria Ciostek has produced a body of work that captures an aesthetic reminiscent of Buffalo. In "Trash and Treasure (Life on Forgotten Frontiers)," her images focus on subjects that have been "left to rot beneath a shadow of unappreciated neglect." By examining the beauty hidden in dilapidated buildings and discarded objects, these ten photographs illustrate human patterns of abandonment and shifting cultural values. These visual themes seem particularly appropriate for Buffalo, suggesting a fresh appreciation of our surroundings, be it a renovated cathedral or a crumbling factory. Buffalo's history seems to breed a personal understanding of both ruins and renewal, creating a local form of respect for the kind of beauty that links those two extremes.
Ciostek's exhibit, to be displayed May 10 at Buffalo Big Print, illustrates her own understanding of this visual dichotomy. Most of the subjects are forgotten objects, such as broken cars, dilapidated dwellings and empty landscapes, depicting a rarely addressed aspect of American culture. Ciostek demonstrates a photographic eye for the unseen, subjects often looked over or typically edited out of the frame. In "Exposure of Wires," for example, she boldly chooses to center telephone wires lining a country road, using compositional technique to emphasize their presence rather than eliminate them. Unafraid to take artistic risks, she challenges and examines typical notions of beauty, while examining changing human affections and the roles that objects play in our lives.
A Buffalo native, Ciostek has a broad range of experience. Having traveled extensively throughout Southeast Asia, studied photography at the Aegean Center for Fine Arts in Greece, and seen much of the North American continent, her work demonstrates a familiarity with dissecting her surroundings, both aesthetically and intellectually. In addition to this exhibition, she is currently working on a series of photos that visually documents east side housing projects, in order to create lasting images before the structures are torn down.
In "Trash and Treasure," each image illustrates an object found newly precious, demonstrating an artistic talent for using photographic skill to suggest her themes, beliefs and observations. In "Forgotten" the light, texture and color of the image highlight the often overlooked beauty of this barn, evoking notions of abandonment and reuse. Framed in wooden window panes that she found discarded throughout Buffalo, Ciostek's work provokes aesthetic and cultural contemplation about material American life as well as Buffalo's own relationship to its environment.
There will be an opening reception for "Trash and Treasure" on Saturday, May 10, from 4-7 pm at Buffalo Big Print, open to the public and located at 78 Allen St. The exhibition will be there on display until June 7. Surely, we all need a little art in our weekend, and this is the place to find it.