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While on your nightly stroll through the Pomona Arts Colony,
check out the new group show, Safety in Numbers—featuring
seven of the colony’s most prominent photo-artists.
Anthony Acosta is featured most prominently in the show,
with 13 untitled images taken while on a trip to Nicaragua.
Acosta’s shots nearly jump off the wall—and
they definitely suck you in, almost as if they’re
3-D. In reality, it’s just that Acosta has a an
expert knack for composition and an enhanced color palette;
images of two boys on one bike, one whose shoes are too
small, the other whose are too big; young boys in a rodeo
pen looking out on all the action and a close-up view
of the rooty ends of carrots are superb. The detail in
the shots is so acute we can actually see the different
layers of dirt in one boy’s soiled cuffs, the dotted
stains on his shirt, and the orangey substance under his
fingernails. Sally Egan has a fantastic retro bed in the
show—yellow button cushion headboard, paisley black-and-white
bed spread and one of those much-maligned rotary telephones.
Amy Bystedt’s series of women with suitcases broken
open and spilling out flowers, lollipops and office papers
is also campy, but it resonates on a deeper level when
you realize that the suitcases are powerful symbols—are
these women just on a day trip or are they leaving old
lives behind? Cherie Savoie hits the mark with Faith,
a portrait of a forlorn-looking debutante, Joe Toreno
is a lighting genius, and Melaney Schmidt and Genevieve
Wolff go way outside the box with abstraction and goofiness,
respectively.
Safety in Numbers, at dba256 Gallery.WineBar, 256 S. Main
St., Pomona, (909) 623-7600; www.dba256.com. Thru June
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