Gallery Vacancy is thrilled to present Stranger, a solo exhibition by artist Danny Sobor at the gallery, on view through March 1, 2025.
She excused herself from the task at hand and looked outside the window; a few stories below, in the neighborhood park, people were relaxing or strolling at their own pace. Spread out, with features unrecognizable, they occasionally passed by or stopped next to each other; their gestures and actions invented personalities for them in her head. Then she found herself facing a choice: to stay out, observing this tableau of neighbors from a distance, or to look in, to fantasize. In the former she would abstain from making any clarifications, for she is letting herself practice the act of looking in a disengaged manner; whereas the latter would draw her closer to each figure, indulging the urge to discern and interpret.
This choice, found in this perhaps very common hobby I first developed when I got bored during piano lessons as a child, is evoked whenever I look at Sobor’s paintings. Sobor sources most of his images from the internet. By the time Sobor discovers them almost archaeologically, most have already been severed from their sources. These images, stranded and experienced independently of their previous lives, exist only as images; and it’s precisely because of this that the magic of the image, spared from the dictation of knowledge, takes the lead. The image does not give us knowledge but calls us to imagine. A glimpse of someone dining in their kitchen or a patch of floral pattern, once touched by our imagination, suddenly gains an uncertainty that prolongs the moment of reaching any conclusion. This time that is being suspended hence allows the viewers to probe the possibility of “a dialectical moment…consisting of not-grasping the image, of letting oneself be grasped by it instead: thus of letting go of one’s knowledge about it”, as described by Georges Didi-Huberman in Confronting Images.
Sobor doesn’t entertain assigning different levels of importance to any parts of his images; every inch of his canvas was treated with the same amount of attention and intensity, as they were all simply ‘seen’ by him, much like looking out into a window. Windows separate the interior from the exterior, ensuring that the act of looking can proceed despite the precarious anonymity of the looker; but they are not impenetrable barriers. While our world is kept discrete from that of our neighbors, sunlight streams in and takes us too into its embrace. This is happening here and now, as light pours through the gallery’s large windows and touches Sobor’s paintings. Sobor thinks paintings should not answer a question directly; they should shift with the light across the day, with your mood, and over time. —Karen Fan
