Alley Cat Gallery: Impressions by Leigh More

I had to forgo partaking in the “JC Fridays” events on Friday because I want to see the last Loew’s film of the season, Raging Bull but luckily Alley Cat Gallery was one of the few galleries in our fair city that realize extending the quarterly event beyond one night can be beneficial to the gallery and the community at large.

It is worth pausing to reflect that there was an evening in Jersey City where I actually had too many choices. I now live in a city where I was conflicted between my love of film and love of art. I guess gentrification isn’t all bad.

On Saturday afternoon I saw the JC Fridays sign on Jersey Ave, mid-block twixt 4th & 5th. I only know of one gallery in the alley. Day-old balloons (they had been out all night) were tied both to the sign and visible on the familiar garage, which is sort of mid-block twixt Coles & Jersey. Whether you’re looking at longitude or latitude – or east or west or north or south – mid-block still applies. Map Quest, are you listening?

Entitled: “Impressions: Abstractions & The Hyper-Surreal,” the show was the first solo show by photographer, Leigh More, who was included in the earlier group show, covered here.

I wonder what hyper-surreal means. Surrealism can be seen as the juxtaposition of images and the connection between the images is made following dream logic, as opposed to say the rationale logic one uses to navigate through the waking world, the real. A larger piece was a photograph of the statue of Gandhi in Union Park, an image that emphasized the garden where the statue is located and the building in the background. Something is off kilter, because the building and its water tower fills the sky and looks different than I remembered it. The garden looks more lush, the statue bigger than life-like—I think it’s actually smaller than life-like, hard to tell, Gandhi was such a short and skinny iconic man of peace. The building which I believe now houses a humongous Whole Foods and use to be the home of Virgin Records has only a veneer of chic-ness, it is actually an old city building, as evidenced by the water or cooling towers. The building actually seems gritty, especially in contrast to the hues of the plants in the garden, which have an iridescent, neon tinge. The statue itself seems to have an almost human complexion. According to Leigh, the final image is actually a series of photographs of the same image, overlaid and each one transformed through a computer program – the one that is not Photoshop. Sure the technology part is interesting; artists can do some things only suggested at with film and dark room technique. But I liked the off-kilter feel, the building appears as gritty as it does in reality, the colors of the plants were obviously the opposite of reality, but then the actual juxtaposition of a peace garden amidst the clamor of big city life, especially a park named for the Union – during the Civil War, New York City supported the Confederacy and voted against Lincoln – Union Square Park has been the setting of many pro-labor, union and anti-war rallies, protests and marches. Surrealism generally now means a kind of meta-reality, a world turned strange and no longer bound by ordinary reality. Hyper-Surreal implies that concept being amplified. Maybe with this Gandhi in Union Square Park image, that magnification of the surreal actually brings the surreal further outside of Breton’s dream-logic manifesto into the realm of reality. Should hyper-surrealism be closer to surrealism or realism? Maybe it depends on how you view Gandhi or a garden within the setting of an urban park or a building originally built during the industrial age and has remained in a neighborhood that has gone from working class to fashionable. Making those connections between the images – and the presentation of the images – could be that’s the hyper part of the surrealism at work here.

The “abstract” pictures included a series called “Time Square Reflections.” Basically, these are photographs of puddles in Time Square. The light of the “reflections” on the surface of the water are then distorted by the photographer for expressionistic purposes. What you get are very eerie rainbows that indeed invoke the famous NYC neighborhood.

For more More, visit: www.leighmorephotography.com

My favorite part of going to the Alley Cat Gallery is this weird alley, walking down the secret passage. I guess I’m easily amused. Somehow I feel transported outside of Jersey City but at the same time, I feel propelled towards the heart of this city, an essence of sorts. I’m amid what is rarely seen. Impressions are an exhibit of photography intended to make us question our perceptions of reality. The fact that it is in a gallery accessible through an alley, a passage way outside the pedestrian norms of our hometown proved to be a subtle and clever reinforcement of the show’s theme.


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