Michael Weinstein

Shooting street scenes in color with his digital camera on his far-flung journeys across the world, Christopher Rauschenberg serves up color images that bring forward the tradition of the great twentieth-century urban abstractionists, most notably Aaron Siskind. Rauschenberg's conceit is to play with the relativity of reality and art from both ends. A shot taken on a late winter day transmutes a filthy New York sidewalk graced by mounds of grimy slush into a modernist sculpture garden. From the other side, the painted face of a woman on a sign advertising Corona beer in a Washington cafe window springs to life amid the trees and buildings reflected in the panes. Although Rauschenberg is a straight shooter, he does not aim to open a window on the world, but to transform it through the camera's eye.

Christopher Rauschenberg shows at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 East Washington, (312)742-2783. Through October 7.

(2007-08-21)

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