Kenneth Pleban
Kenneth Pleban’s series, In/Ex, focuses on the eerie, empty interiors of decommissioned institutional sites. As economic policies of the 1990s rendered many hospitals, prisons, schools and other state institutions obsolete, countless buildings have been demolished or developed. Pleban’s photographs of the interiors of these redundant institutions document the effects of these historical shifts. However, these photographs are far from simple documents and are loaded with potent conceptual and psychological implications. In an effort to convey a sense of human activity within these empty spaces, Pleban often rearranges their furniture and objects. An empty primary school classroom, a neatly decorated deceased estate and an empty telephone exchange foster a sense of the uncanny as they allude to life and activity which is long since past.
