Arts Agenda - Am I blue

Atlanta-born artist Harriet Leibowitz has photographed male nudes for years now. On opening night of her Color show, many of her beautiful models showed up at Vaknin Schwartz (with their clothes on). Black-and-white photographs in the gallery’s back space show her skill at highly figurative compositions, but it’s what’s up front that counts. Exploring the body as metaphor, her newest work pushes the strength and spirit of the human form to the edge of abstraction. She photographs through a scrim in a way that reveals only isolated fragments of her model’s perfect physique. As he stretches body against silk, what comes through is only one aspect — the fragility of a jaw and a cheekbone, the fine arch of an ear, a wing-like shoulder, a curving backbone, the roundness of a skull, the skeletal geometry of hands.

With an uncanny resemblance to chrysalises, the images are also like jewels, glowing in sapphire, pale robin’s-egg blue, crimson, purple and silvery gray. Ranging from 11-inch-square to 48-inch-square, the quiescent figures are often displayed in groups of two, four or more. One vertical composition of fourteen 11-inch photos looks like a fantastic Pantone color chart.

Color continues through July 28 at Vaknin Schwartz, 1831 Peachtree Road. 404-351-0035??