David Gilbert

David Gilbert (born 1982 in New York) lives and works in Los Angeles. David Gilbert's photography can be situated in the unique crossroads of sculpture, drawing, painting, assemblage, installation, and image reproduction. Using these various media, Gilbert stages and photographs mise-en-scènes in the studio which variously and indeterminately read as traces of action, aftermath, something in progress, or finally, some kind of incident, accidentally perceived. Characterized by a sense of open-ended mystery and adumbration, the work willfully embraces ambiguity as a generative, queer position. Its quasi-Victorian quality of metaphor and suggestion feels incredibly fresh and fertile in the literal and taxonomical explicitness of our moment. Gilbert's images are known to gracefully teem with draped curtains, window-sourced lighting, and a soft, accidental voyeurism. Shadows function as compositional and narrative devices, which help create the contemplative and melancholic mood of the photos while also inevitably reflecting on the indexical and intrinsically haunted nature of photography. In the case of Gilbert, a photography haunted by the absence of bodies, muted longing, and loss.