Micah Stansell, Past. Perfect. Continuous., film still. Photo courtesy Whitespace Gallery.

Past. Perfect. Continuous., Micah and Whitney Stansell’s collaboration currently on view at Whitespace Gallery, demonstrates how two artists can support, respect, and inspire one another while still pushing and challenging each other to new creative heights. The exhibition is the husband and wife’s first two-person show and includes a variety of media, from video installation, paintings, and drawings to paper sculptures and even a small book. The two main themes are open-ended narrative and the process of editing, applied to both film and two-dimensional media.

Whitney Stansell, Past. Perfect. Continuous., installation view. Photo courtesy Whitespace Gallery.

Whitney Stansell‘s drawings and paintings explore editing in a square arrangement of nine tableaus lining the gallery’s back wall. The middle row portrays three different scenes viewed from a distance, as if they were shot through a wide-angle lens, while the top and bottom rows reference these larger scenes in cropped closeups and isolated details. Stansell’s signature footnotes help explain the characters and setting. Borrowing the idea of editing from film, these works accent main characters and important elements of the story such as the cemetery and the ping-pong paddle.

Micah Stansell, Past. Perfect. Continuous., installation view. Photo courtesy Whitespace Gallery.

However, it is more commonplace to think of editing in film than in drawing or painting. In Micah Stansell’s film and video project, gallery visitors encounter eight flat-screen televisions. Instead of presenting one viewpoint on a single screen, the installation makes it impossible to watch the whole story at the same time; viewers become active participants in the process of editing when they focus on one image, or jump from screen to screen. The more effort you put into understanding, the more valuable your experience. There is no sound to accompany the moving images, which places further focus on the work’s visual properties. It is stunningly beautiful to watch unfold, and evokes memories and emotions from one’s own past.

Whitney Stansell, The Push, drawing and mixed media. Photo courtesy Whitespace Gallery.

In turn, Micah’s film inspired another set of drawings by Whitney on display in the front gallery. These works continue the theme of editing in wide-angle views like The Push and cropped close-up scenes like The Exchange. The drawings are framed in simple natural wood without glass, and mirror the size of the flat screens in Micah’s installation. An element of collage adds subtle depth to the work.

The Stansells draw inspiration from their families and places they have called home. Many of Whitney’s scenes depict stories from her mother’s life growing up in Pittsburgh. Her artwork places these snippets of oral history in settings modeled after everyday life in their neighborhood. The pink house that appears numerous times is found near their home in College Park (not far from the airport), as are the planes that gracefully fly through the sky in Micah’s film. These are a few examples of how the couple incorporates their daily life into their art.

What is captivating about both artists’ work is the suggestion of a more comprehensive narrative that is never fully explained. The film and drawings both give prominence to a closeup of hands grasping money; one feels the climax of the story revolves around this exchange. But what is the significance of this action? And what are the relationships between the characters? By not fully explaining these relationships, audiences are left making their own assumptions.

Micah and Whitney Stansell’s relationship as a collaborative entity allowed each to play their individual strengths while exploring new possibilities suggested by the other. Past. Perfect. Continuous. is a delight for the eyes and the mind, and left me excited to see how they continue to develop as individual artists and collaborative partners.