No matter how she appears in her works, Cleary demonstrates an ability to be, as the existentialists call it, “a voyeur of the self.” On the simplest level, this reflects her method—setting up a camera with shutter delay and variable exposures, assuming a posture and allowing that photo to structure a drawing. On another level, this objectivity leads to a reckoning with universal form—the human body as a mannerist, contrapposto letter S (a Caravaggio trick) or as an homage to the sfumato technique by which smoky light defines curves.

Jean Lawlor Cohen, Curator