Jim Dingilian's Bleach and Marker Works at McKenzie Fine Art

From February 17 to March 19, 2005, Jim Dingilian presented two distinct bodies of work at McKenzie Fine Art in New York. The exhibition featured altered found photographs and marker drawings on grade school desk tops. For the photographs, Dingilian dipped snapshots in bleach, using a resistive coating to preserve lines, leaving ghostly figures that emerge like spirits in Victorian ghost photographs. These works explore memory and narrative through erasure. The drawings, in blue marker on desk surfaces, depict urban and suburban landscapes such as truck stops and strip mall edges, evoking a chilled nostalgia through their cyanotype-like blue filter. The marker is unfixed, requiring measures to hold the images in place. The drawings eliminate photographic images while suggesting emotional atmosphere. Dingilian's process involves a paradoxical desire for the unexpected, with the ghost-figures introducing an uncanny otherness independent of artistic control. The two series differ in mood but share parallels: photographs involve erasure, while drawings involve traces and residual marks like scratches and wood grain. The exhibition invites viewers to linger for subtle plays on memory.