Tama Hochbaum @ Room For Painting Room For Paper

This is a new gallery at 49 Geary and Hochbaum was 1/2 of the first exhibition in the Room For Paper. Hochbaum uses a photographic collage technique similar to Masumi Hayashi (from Cocoa’s blog) and this exhibition was of her series of trees. I had an immediate visceral reaction to her work, the trees seemed alive, to be bursting through the multiple borders of the compositions. Her images brought to mind Cubism, of seeing many aspects at once, and also memory, how we perceive in such complex ways (angles, details, filters, moods, associations) and how our memory reflects that complexity sometimes more than present experience, how the photographic subjects themselves are complex, far too complex perhaps to capture in a single frame, which for me was particulary relevant to photographing trees. Some of the pieces were especially strong in this such as High Tree (above), High Trees at Dusk, and Evening on Gimghoul. You can see Hochbaum’s work at www.tamahochbaum.com.