Excerpted from: Andy Grundberg’s essay on Civilian Art Projects and its inaugural exhibitions Jason Zimmerman: Natural Acts and Jason Falchook: Contours and Detours, March 2007

[…] Jason Zimmerman’s series “Natural Acts” continues his photographic exploration of incidental evidence supplied by the physical world. Like Falchook, he positions nature and humanity in a tenuous balance, but while Falchook’s pictures read as surveillance Zimmerman’s appear forensic. Whatever the word “documentary” means when applied to the camera, it has traction here, in images of chipped china and gooey aluminum foil and other frayed objects, but for no imaginable uplifting social purpose. Call it Documentary Degree Zero, a collection of evidence for which there is no crime.

Taken together, and in company with the other artists on the roster of Civilian Art Projects, Falchook and Zimmerman are sniffing out similar aesthetic territory, fashioning a discourse that tempers inevitability and loss with possibility and wonder. Without seeming cynical or hectoring, their work steers us toward considering art as a critical instrument that embraces feeling and subjectivity as crucial to its meaning.

The debut of a new gallery that celebrates local talent is always a cause for celebration and optimism, in part because it signals the viability of a new aesthetic point of view. In this case, the cause for optimism is even greater since there is an assumption that this viewpoint has a market – that collectors and curators will support these artists and this gallery. Based on the evidence of this first show, they should.

Andy Grundberg is a critic, curator, and educator who has written about photography for more than 25 years. His writings for the New York Times and other publications are collected in the book Crisis of the Real (Aperture).