"The Tyranny of Sex" by Robyn Raines
In a sense, the issues of seeing and understanding that are raised by Elaine Fleck also, apparently, motivate Robyn Raines [Cedar Bluff, Va.] and Joseph Champagne [Bristol, Va.]. Though their work is different, both challenge our modes of understanding by altering our normal perceptions of things. Raines treats language as physical form when she makes a sculptural object of a book by extending its pages, accordion style, into the gallery space or when she literally cuts words from a page in a book and then stores them in envelopes like confetti. Champagne does it in his photographs by his subdued color schemes and by the way his carefully chosen viewpoints create compositions in which mass is reduced to shape and forms are flattened, thereby disrupting the eye's easy movement into and around the picture's space.
