William Frucht
Ellis Island Island #6 and Ellis Island Hospital #1.
Everything in William Frucht’s photographs is having its layers peeled away — of paint, varnish, wood, metal — by time and neglect. At first glance they could be of century-old buildings anywhere in the Northeast, until a certain famous statue appears in the window of one of the buildings. Then the pictures snap into focus; they’re of the buildings on Ellis Island, the famous point of arrival for the great wave of immigrants at the beginning of the 20th century, when U.S. immigration was perhaps the most open it has been in its history as a global power.
The Ellis Island photographs are part of “Horizon,” a group show of work by Frucht, Michael Zack, and Ruth Sack running now at City Gallery through Jan. 29. The theme of the show isn’t literal; rather, in each case the artists are showing pieces that find them each expanding their own artistic terrain.
Frucht’s photographs of the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital “reflect its present condition: half abandoned and half saved, our feeling toward it as conflicted as our relationship with immigration itself,” an accompanying statement reads. Asked about his photographs, Frucht said that “almost all of us are immigrants or descended from immigrants — voluntary or not — and as a nation we revere that history while trying to keep it firmly in the past. Yet the past was no different.” One of the horizons in Frucht’s photographs is the one the past recedes beneath, and for Ellis Island, that means a tension between the incomplete history we have of it and the mythology we built around it, both of which stubbornly continue to affect how the U.S. treats immigrants now.
Michael Zack
Night Gathering 1 and Night Gathering
Michael Zack’s pieces are a continuation of an idea he has been exploring as an artist for some time, of creating and placing silhouettes of figures in abstract spaces, with intriguing and changing results. “Shorn of distinguishing facial features and clothing detail, they become anyone and everyone, yet they are uniquely individual and somewhat mysterious,” he writes in an accompanying statement. “They are frequently, but not always based on people I know and have had the opportunity to observe as they go about their daily lives.” Zack arranges them into a “narrative … that is especially meaningful to me on a personal level,” but he isn’t interested in simply telling the story. “I invite the viewer to interpret this world in his or her own way,” he writes.
Ruth Sack
Blue Wave.
Previous iterations of this approach used flatter colors and textures, which gave much of Zack’s work a sense of solitude; even when multiple figures appeared, they seemed alone. Over the years, however, the figures have become more dynamic and the textures he deploys much more dramatic, giving each image more energy. Instead of solitude, there is a real sense of interaction. Is it competition or cooperation? Is it a picture of a party or a picture of violence? The ambiguity makes Zack’s pieces a world to get a little lost in.
All three artists in the exhibit are unified by an attention to creating rich textures, whether it’s Frucht’s peeling paint, Zack’s undulating shades of gray, or Ruth Sack’s extremely tactile paintings and sculptures, the vivid colors of which are augmented by the pieces’ dynamic surfaces. She “considers ‘horizon’ both literally and conceptually,” an accompanying statement reads. The paintings float free of a horizon altogether; “the sculptures,” Sack is quoted as saying, “are a new horizon for me, in that I am pursuing new directions. These works are multicolored reliefs, a considerable departure from earlier work. In this context, I am broadening my horizons.”
“Horizon” runs at City Gallery, 994 State St., through Jan. 29. Visit the gallery’s website for hours and more information.
In the late 1890s, my three-year-old Aunt, Mariangela, & Grandmother, Naninella, arrived on Ellis Island from Naples, Italy, & were greeted by my Grandfather, Mariano, who had come to New Haven a year earlier to rent an apartment at Wooster Square & to work at Sargent's over an open fire, forging iron for Yale doors & windows. My Grandfather, who couldn't wait to see his wife & young daughter after such a long absence, unfortunately had to wait another day, since Mariangela had fallen on the ship, & was treated & observed overnight at the Ellis Island hospital.
I have not yet seen the exhibit, but have always been interested in the now-defunct medical setting. Thank you for taking these historic photos, which make our family's experience come alive.