Last night’s show went incredibly well, and I want to thank everyone who was kind enough to come out and support me - all of my friends, family, co-workers, and fellow artists. You made it all worthwhile, and you gave me one of the best evenings of my life. I got to see some wonderful old friends who I haven’t seen in years, and hopefully made a few new ones as well. All in all, it was amazing, and I sold 19 pieces after it was all over. My heartfelt thanks to everyone who attended, and who reminded me what a great group of folks I am fortunate to have in my life. I’m a humbled and happy man today.

Today is the day.

My first solo photography show has its opening reception at the Romaine Brooks Gallery from 5 to 9 PM. People have been asking if I’m nervous, and at first I answered honestly that I wasn’t. As the questions continued, however, I began to wonder if maybe I should be worried. In the end, though, I did the best that I could do, and if the show isn’t perfect, it’s a perfect first try.

Are there things I’d change? Like most artists might answer, of course there are. This time around there are 42 pieces being displayed - that’s quite a few for any exhibit, particularly for a smaller gallery. I’d make it more stream-lined next time and focus on a smaller theme. But since this was my first solo show, I wanted to get everything out at once and show a certain flexibility and range. Still, I managed to reign it all in and work out some ego issues in the process.

In some ways, it feels like it’s already happened. I’ve been working on this show since January - nine months ago - and it was just the right gestation period. I’m ready for it to be shown, and then I’ll be ready to move on to a more managerial position at the gallery and leave the self-showiness behind. To be honest, I’m a bit sick of myself, and that may have been the goal all along.

Now it’s time to put the Ego to rest.

The Time is at hand…

THE EYE OF THE EGO
Photographs by Alan Bennett Ilagan
Opening Reception: Today, September 5, 2008 from 5 to 9 PM
At The Romaine Brooks Gallery
332 Hudson Avenue ~Albany, NY 12210 (3rd Floor)
And running throughout the month of September.

Tomorrow is the much-ballyhooed 2nd anniversary of 1st Friday. It also marks my first solo show ever at the Romaine Brooks Gallery at the Capital District Gay & Lesbian Community Center at 332 Hudson Avenue, Albany, NY 12210. Be sure to check out the 1st Friday site and download a map of all the events going on - and please stop by to say Hello!

WHAT: The Eye of the Ego - Photographs by Alan Bennett Ilagan
WHERE: Romaine Brooks Gallery
332 Hudson Avenue, Albany, NY 12210
WHEN: Friday, September 5, 2008 ~ 5 to 9 PM

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

It’s a surprisingly empty experience to kiss yourself. In addition to the initial awkwardness of getting intimate with someone you know so well and the unsettling aspect of having their movements match yours exactly, there is the icy smooth slate of the mirror, cold and hard and unyielding against your lips. Like the cruelest depths of unrequited love, kissing yourself is disappointingly one-sided.

The same holds true for any exercise in ego. Vanity, self-love, narcissism - these are all solitary pursuits. The creation of art is often of a solitary nature as well - the difference is that the end result is usually meant to be shared. That sparked the battle between my own ego and my artistic ambition - and the resulting images are intended to portray the journey of that struggle.

The journey begins with a series of black and white photographs of myself, taken with a timer, and always alone. There’s something sad about each of these self-portraits - in their solitude, their intrinsic isolation - and it’s a sadness that bleeds into all aspects of the ego. In addition, with the exception of two confrontational shots, the eyes never meet the camera, never engage the viewer. These are solitary acts of egotism - alone, aloof, and unconcerned with anything or anyone other than the self.

There is a loneliness to these pieces that disturbs me, and that’s the first part of breaking free from the ego. The other disturbing aspect on display is the complete lack of a smile in the portraits. There is no joy here. The images and expressions are brooding and dark, even as the subject does his best to bask in a desperate bid to discover and display beauty. It is as if the very act of auto-eroticism has sucked the possibility of happiness from the air, leaving an empty, vapid void. You can look, but you can never join. There is a remoteness inherent in the photos, a lack of anything shared, and the entire exhibit pivots on this realization.

The elusive, teasing, torturous bid to find self-worth through self-love is ultimately, and always, doomed. Without someone to share it with, it’s a futile exercise, and an apt metaphor for art itself. Whether it’s with one other person or millions, the point of art, at least for me, has been to share it with someone else. It is this act of sharing, of laying oneself out bare for all the world to see, that breaks the bonds of the ego.

When I finally viewed the photos as a group the journey revealed itself fully. In addition to viewing the self-portraits in a sadder light, I found that the photographs in which I didn’t appear were infinitely more interesting to me. They also turned out to be more telling and revealing than any nude shot I’ve ever done. It was then that I decided to split the show into two - the first part of black and white self-portraits illustrating the ego, and the second part in full color depicting a world beyond the ego.

Midway through the exhibition, the ego comes to its destructive end, as depicted in the hanging scene in ‘The End of the Ego’. Along with ‘Barren Corridor‘, this piece marks the definitive turning point in overcoming the ego. From here forward, the gaze shifts from self-examination and self-love to a focus on the world outside of myself.

Life returns in all of its colorful, messy, exquisite gaudiness - from a day-glo martini to a pastel-hued bleeding heart flower. A loose trajectory plots a seasonal path from the icy death throes of winter, through a blazing autumn and smoldering summer, and winding up at the start of spring, and the very beginning of life as seen in a seed capsule (‘Seed Shore Vessel’) and a drop of water (‘Water Droplet Nestled in a Leaf’).

There is solace to be found in this natural beauty, as well as a healing sense of relief once the onerous albatross of the ego has been released. In the end, this exhibit became an opportunity to excise the ego. Instead of revealing the beauty of the body and forging some forced idea of false self-esteem, it ended up showing the grotesque nature of unchecked and unhealthy self-love, and the resulting deformity of character if it is not overcome. Only by throwing off the trappings of vanity and self-obsession can the artist, and in this case the subject, move beyond the superficial to discover true beauty. There is no other way out. In some small sense, I hope that’s what I’ve accomplished by sharing these images with you.

– Alan Bennett Ilagan, September 2008

THE BODY HAPPENS TO BE A UNIQUELY APT LOCATION
for the inscription of shame, partly because the body itself seems to be the sense organ of shame (the feeling swamps us, we stutter and flush against our will), but also because the content of shame, what we feel ashamed of, typically seems indelible and fixed, with us as a sort of natural fact, the way the body is with us as a natural fact. “Shame is what you are, guilt is what you do,” goes an old saying. Guilt can be undone with acts of penance, but the feeling of shame sticks around like a birthmark or the smell of cigarettes.
- Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes the World

Just when I was about to write off this summer as a rain-filled basement-background workdrop for the creation of a photography show, along comes this week’s forecast of sun and temps in the 80’s. Further proof that Mother Nature will not be dismissed so easily, and woe to us who try to force her hand.

It will be good to get another stretch of pool weather. Andy has been keeping the water warm, and both of us are looking forward to a few more days of summer living.

These morning glories have been putting on their late-summer show for a few weeks now. Together with the yellow and rust-hued Helenium, they are providing a welcome burst of bright color against a deep blue sky.

UNALLOYED SHAMELESSNESS EXISTS IN MYTH,
and in our fantasies of psychopaths, but most actual humans cannot uncover their secrets without passing through their shame… Perhaps it would be better, then, to say that those who work the edge between what can and can’t be said do not escape from shame but turn toward it and engage with it. They wrestle with it; they try to change its face; they kill it in one form so as to resurrect it in another.
– Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes the World

THE EYE OF THE EGO
Photographs by Alan Bennett Ilagan
Presented by the Romaine Brooks Gallery
At the Capital District Gay & Lesbian Community Center
332 Hudson Avenue, Albany, NY 12210
Opening Reception:
This Friday, September 5, 2008
5 - 9 PM

Next Friday, September 5, 2008, I will have my first photo exhibition, THE EYE OF THE EGO, at the Romaine Brooks Gallery, as part of Albany’s 1st Friday Events.

It’s special in a number of ways. First and foremost, it’s my very first solo show. Second, (and fittingly so), it’s the 2nd anniversary of 1st Friday Albany. Third, it marks my first official event as manager of the Romaine Brooks Gallery. Any one of these things is reason enough for the ballyhoo and hoopla - the fact that they’re coming together for this one amazing month is an almost-perfect alignment of stars.

I will hang the show this weekend. After viewing it in its entirety and finally deciding on the sequencing and order, it turned out to have an unexpected aspect of melancholy to it, which is actually rather appropriate if you know me in the least.

At some point it evolved into something much more meaningful than I ever intended, taking its own twists and turns and becoming its own wondrous entity without me having a direct hand in it. The Eye took over my own Ego, overturned it, and transformed what I originally thought was beautiful (myself and my own self-study) into the grotesque, and what I first thought to be filler (a few nature shots and still-lifes) into the real beauty. That may be the most exciting part of creating a show, and I’m grateful to have had this opportunity. (I’m also looking forward to the relief that will come when I get to hand off the opportunity to other artists when this month comes to a close.)

THE EYE OF THE EGO
Presented by the Romaine Brooks Gallery
At The Capital District Gay & Lesbian Community Center
332 Hudson Avenue, Albany, NY 12210

OPENING RECEPTION:
Friday, September 5, 2008
5 - 9 PM
Free and Open to All!