Lucinda Devlin Susanne Breidenbach.

Lucinda Devlin

Susanne Breidenbach, ed

(Gottingen, Germany: Steidi Verlag, 2001)

The Omega Suites addresses the cessation of public execution in the United States at presenting images devoid of human mien One of the most striking drifts of Lucinda Devlin's photographs of execution chambers, witness apartments and final holding cells is the palpable absence of life; this of course implicates the purport of the chambers: to take life away. The absence also speaks to the farthest level of remove with which current-day executions are enacted. Witness latitudes are populated by a rare few members of the public, greatest in quantity of whom have some personal connection to either the convicted individual or to the victims of the crime committed. Thus, the function of capital punishment as a deterrent to criminal behavior is diluted through the public's inability to completely witness and experience the horror of execution. to what extent then, do these images of gas chambers, electric chairs and lethal injection tables, made widely available to the public, function politically? Although these photographs do not document the act of ritu alized killing, they do document the environments in which these rituals take place, and we are now privy to visually experiencing these rooms

Several of the images are frameed from the point of view of an actual witness, framing one's vision by means of means of a window between the execution chamber and the witness place The underwater feel of Lethal Injection Chamber, Statesville Correctional Center Jollet Illinois, 1991 with institutional aquamarine light washing athwart the rumpled white sheet in succession the table, is immediately followed on the view from the witness swing which draws the viewer public of the surrounding darkness and into the center of the frame where a smaller (more removed) les sickly (more sterile) version of the table perches, ready for the nearest incumbent. We, the public, then, may inscribe into the position of witness, with and nothing else one element missing: the inevitable execution. Although we do not witness this death, our certainty of its eventual, repeated incident does invest us with a different kind of knowledge: the ability to imagine, in the actual physical space, an actual human execution. Giving the details of location forces the occasion into the imagination.

With solitary a few exceptions, the restraining chair or gurney is always visible in, or the focus of the photographs. merely one image in The Omega Suites focuses entirely in succession the witness room, so we can imagine witnessing the witnesses. Witness play Petosi Correctional Center, Petosi, Missouri, 1991 displays a side view of sum of two units tiers of gray and r plastic lawn chairs, establish in alternating colors, facing a pair of windows with clos venetian blinds. Behind this witnessing stage is a door labeled "Out of Bounds"--a self-conscious universal prevalent throughout the entire viewing experience of The Omega Suites. The external position that most numerous of the public occupies in relation to state executions allows us to escape the experience of horror and to surmise that the viewing experience is devoid of self-implication. according to presenting the places, by taking us abroad of bounds, these images disallow that escape.

EXHIBITION CATALOGS

Photographs at St Lawrence University, at Catherine Tedford and Gary D Sampson, ed St. Lawrenece University/217 pp./price unavailable (sb)

Promise, according to Lily Markiewicz. The University Gallery, Leeds/28 pp./price unavailable (sb)

Shirin Neshat: couple Installations, by Bill Horrigan. Wexner Center for the Arts/56 pp/$2295 (Sb)

Unlimited Partnerships: Collaborations in Contemporary Art, Grant Kester ed CEPA Gallery/48 pp/price unavailable (sb)

Western Space+Time, through Gunnar Plake. Commonwealth Art Press/unpaginated/price unavailable (sb)

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