Currently at OKOK Gallery until May 4th is “While,” a two person show with works by Mauro Altamura and Anna Von Mertens concerning the passage of time. Both artists examine political and historical occurrences from various perspectives.

Altamura is exhibiting 144 (out of 1000) photographs from his series, “Anonymous,” which he began during the presidential elections of 2000. Altamura collected images of anonymous people in the background of published pictures in the Friday New York Times. The artist then re-photographed and enlarged these faces, displaying them in a grid-like pattern, reminiscent of institutional methods of photographic indexing. Together they become a shrine of anonymity and obscurity, with the enlargement of the faces causing the original image to dissolve into a dot pattern. This partial portraiture creates a sense of loss and powerlessness, familiar feelings in our current political atmosphere.

Von Mertens will be exhibiting three works from “As Stars Go By,” a project that displays the star rotation patterns above violent and dramatic events in American history. The artist hand stitches the patterns into quilts, with each stitch becoming a marker of time and a silent reminder of past and future. Events depicted include the Civil War Battle of Antietam, Hiroshima, and the morning of September 11th. All took place during the daytime hours, thus concealing the star patterns above from those affected below. The stars serve as passive spectators and suggest nature’s transcendence above human interactions and indiscretions.

Altamura received an M.F.A. from the Visual Studies Workshop/SUNY Buffalo and a B.A. from Ramapo College of New Jersey. He has received several grants, including those from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

Von Mertens received a B.A. from Brown University in 1995 and her M.F.A. from the California College of the Arts. She has displayed her work at Jack Hanley Gallery in San Francisco, the Berkeley Art Museum, and White Box in New York.