Michael Weinstein

Maria Ponce is the coolest, toughest photographic portraitist in Chicago--or maybe on the planet. Stripped down to her lingerie, she shot three takes of herself shooting naked Roger Williams sprawled on a bed, enacting the fantasy of a predatory dominatrix using the camera as her bondage device. Addicted to the wild side, Ponce gives us, in her series of five environmental portraits of Xavier, a study of the extremities of relentless cool. A homey with a mohawk, Xavier manages to combine laidback sweetness with stoical impenetrability--a synthesis beyond the most extravagant suburban imagination. Xavier's poise does not even crack when Ponce poses him biting a prickly weed like a wild animal in a testosterone fit feeling acute pain and insistent desire all at once. It's not that he's acting; it's just that part of him isn't there and never will be.

Maria Ponce shows at Metal Works Gallery, 2340 North Lister, (773)278-3331, through October 29.

(2004-10-06)

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