New Works

Unease, discomfort, and,occasionally, outright fear are the main currents of the theatrically staged photographs that comprise Carlos and Jason Sanchez’s best known work. Their new photographs deal with similar themes, employing digital and theatrical staging techniques. Melding players and objects from studio sets with “characters” and “backdrops” from the uneasy, discomfited moments of everyday life, the Sanchezes assemble different times and spaces into narrative tableaus. What endures throughout the Sanchez Brothers’ oeuvre are images so effectively constructed that the unreal seems factual. This is intentional, as many images portray or are inspired by real-life personal experiences and true stories from the media. As such, these artists’ work serves as a
reflection of the times in which we live, as well as of the web of personal tensions we negotiate daily, an unending slide between escape and entrapment, freedom and imprisonment.

The ultimate challenge of photography, the Sanchezes say, is “to successfully express an idea in one single frame” – a challenge their constructive processes and florid imaginations meet, to great effect, again and again.