COREY ARNOLD DOCUMENTS ENNUI & SHEER TERROR ON LAKE COCYTUS
Has anyone ever made fish entrails look so appealing or truly captured the atavistic artistry of crab fishing? Corey Arnold’s visceral tableaus have at once the ring of the familiar and the whiff of the new, as if a National Geographic photographer put to sea with Steve Zissou and Matthew Barney. Hidden within his weatherworn crew is a humor born of survival, a comic resignation to the caprices of the Bering Sea; hence the compulsion to backstroke in a den of crabs, mockingly wrap a weighted rope around one’s neck, or swing blindfolded at a pinata on a wave-besieged deck. The blanched horizon and monochromatic elements accentuate any hint of color, and thankfully, Arnold’s crab-fishing crew wears more hunter’s orange and neon yellow than Cheney and Scalia on a duckhunt, which guarantees bold silhouettes and unequivocal points of focus. I especially like the punchy colors in the pictures of the fisherman with blue rubber gloves who patiently caresses a green rope, and the horseshoe-shaped port rimmed by crimson red buildings and snow-covered mountains.
