Light Work presents Peppy Downer, a selection of photographs from our collection by Vikky Alexander, Mike Barth, Robert Benjamin, Phil Block, David Broda, John Collier, Larry Cook, Peter de Lory, Lucinda Devlin, Lydia Ann Douglas, Alex Harsley, Biff Henrich, Jeffrey Hoone, Saiman Li, Pipo Nguyen-duy, Diane Neumaier, Ernesto Pujol, Jon Reis, Patricia Reynolds, Coreen Simpson, Aaron Siskind, Lenard Smith, Miso Suchy, and James Welling. This exhibition is curated by Lucas Blalock.

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The works selected here form a picture of our common plot. They are whistling a song about time, history, and experience. They are a collective of individuals in the present that coordinate the real differences of their pasts. There is some not so sublimated violence here, alongside cheap gags, hard-won beauty, and everyday disbelief. There is Americana, conceptual ploys and surrealism. There are documents and fictions. I called the show Peppy Downer as a nod to a feeling of disappointment that is somehow still ringed in giddiness, an optimism that is cruel to the believer, or an overly caffeinated doldrum. It is a mirror to our times and a window.

That last bit alludes to how this is also very much a show about photography, in that it is a show about the medium’s potential to reflect, confirm, and imagine the terms of our encounter with the world. Photography allows us to bring together the elements of our world into a constellation, organize some thoughts about it, and sort out a kind of sense, even if that sense feels increasingly like nonsense.

There is a paper bag on the ground, a marching band in the woods, a man vacuuming his dog, Cinderella’s castle, an electric chair, a man’s bound feet, some more dogs. There is novelty architecture, an ear, some foil, a collapsed horse, and a burning house. There is bread in the air and a monument on its side.

Peppy Downer draws exclusively from the Light Work Collection and pulls together works whose makers might have never imagined exhibiting together. It is a portrait through difference as much as similarity, but its music is a mixtape of our time, laid down by our importantly diverse and complicated cohort. Power to the people.

-Lucas Blalock, Artist and Assistant Professor of Art at Bard College