Fred Cray “Dissolve”

Janet Borden

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Fred Cray’s new series of unique Dissolve prints present a radical new body of work. Although he continues to adhere to his previous process of transforming photographic imagery through manipulation, in this series the resulting images, based in photography, are unique works on paper.
Cray’s multiple layers imply movement, both of time and image. This interweaving sets a cadence that is both visually rigorous and seductively intimate. Cray continues to make work that suggests that a secret is about to be revealed.

Making art is a process. Cray’s entire oeuvre has played the balance of the image as a relic from real life and as a fantastic creation from the artist’s hand. In this series, the extraordinary process begins with Cray’s printing his images on a surface that repels ink. As a result, these prints have a very brief lifespan (2-20 minutes) before they dissolve into something either unrecognizable or unusable.
Cray’s intervention contradicts the notion that there is an optimum moment when the prints were either scanned or rephotographed to make a digital file for the larger unique print.

This body of work presents a new development in Cray’s ongoing interest in visual labyrinths. Portraits, landscapes, still lifes feature the accidental and unexpected connections of an almost aleatoric process. Fortuity and luck are assisted by rigorous editing of these surprising combinations. In these experiments, Cray formalizes the coincidental by emphasizing the conscious process of composition.

FRED CRAY (American, b. 1957) is a graduate of Middlebury College and Yale Graduate School of Painting. His work is included in many collections, such as The Museum of the City of New York; Yale University Art Gallery; Columbia University; Brooklyn Museum of Art; California Museum of Photography. He currently lives in Brooklyn.