Florencia Durante - Light Actions

Durante's work certainly rewards reflection and consideration, and so it was a shame that during my visit to this new gallery I found myself distracted by the bustle of the Navy Blue Design Group office, with whom the Corn Exchange shares part of its gallery space. The images on display here find the artist using long-exposure photographs as a canvas on which to paint with light, each one serving as a searching investigation of the space in which the image was created; a meditation on the limitations of our own visual senses, and – by extension – an invitation to entertain more metaphysical ideas. In one image an arc of light crashes recklessly between two chairs, upsetting each of them and seeming to suggest the intervention of some lightning-fast interloper, a glimpse of some dramatic event that we can only have access to through the quickness of the camera's eye. Of course, these aren't snapshots, we are instead experiencing a compression of time – many deliberate movements distilled down to one vital image. It is from Durante's ability to suggest the ungraspable richness and possibility of each single moment that the magic and fascination in her work stems. [Jay Shukla]