GABRIEL LESTER PUBLISHED IN WWW.ARTFORUM.COM
Versatile Dutch artist Gabriel Lester exposes yet another facet of his taste for mysteriously ambiguous narratives in his first show at Natalia Goldin Gallery. What could be considered one large site-specific installation, much like works he has shown in Sweden before, consists of two objects (a fan and a '50s-style tape recorder), two photo series and two discrete photographs, a video, and "blackmail letters" written by six different famous Swedish writers. What makes the disparate parts fit together so neatly is the pervasive film-noir mood. The eerie black-and-white images depicting apartments in variously shadowy lights greet the visitor with a portentous thrill. The old fashioned tape recorder in the middle of the room emits the sound of someone making a call and someone else picking up and saying "Hello?" The noise blends in with the soundtrack of a ten-minute film, also showing in the small gallery space: Slightly altered shots of Stockholm at night are overlain with the kind of tense, foreboding score typically used to suggest that something really bad is just about to happen. Nothing bad ever does happen, but the suspense is all the more intense for that. Subtly, and perhaps even unintentionally, Lester has transformed the space and imbued it with an unease that's tough to shake even after walking out of the gallery.