Interrupted Landscapes
In the hubbub of the holidays, it was easy to miss Steve Ozone's opening at Form + Content. But then, Ozone's show — a sly series of portrait photography, in which immigrants pose against mundane backdrops of daily life — is all about the ease and unease of going unnoticed. Posing in stock environments of middle-class Americana (carports, suburban garages, front lawns), Ozone's everymen and women, folks of Middle Eastern, Asian and African descent, simultaneously pop with immigrant identity and absorb into the surrounding banality. It's a flip-flop duality, notability and normalcy, that Ozone calls "the friction between diversity and homogeneity." In a clever touch, he often drops a screen of canvas behind his subjects. The false backdrop makes us think of casting, of situating actors in sound stages and challenging them to pretend while also being natural, to let true selfhood suffuse an adopted character. (Noon-6 p.m. Thu.-Sat. through Jan. 21, with an artist's talk Jan. 22 from 1-3 p.m. Form + Content, 210 N. 2nd St., Mpls. formandcontent.org)
GREGORY J. SCOTT
