Art: Private View

Catherine Yass Central Club Hotel, London WC1

James Hall
Saturday 06 February 1999 00:02 GMT
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Catherine Yass's photographs are like abstract watercolours turned into stained glass: they exude a luminous liquid glow.

Her subject matter could hardly be more banal - she photographs the unpopulated interiors of old and disused buildings and takes head-and-shoulder portraits. But this unpromising material is energised by technical ingenuity. She lays a blue negative transparency on top of a positive of the same image. These are then enlarged into a Cibachrome transparency mounted in a lightbox. As a result, the colours go haywire, and otherwise deadpan people and places catch fire, freeze, and bleed.

Her latest project comprises eight lightbox images taken inside the thermal baths at Baden-Baden, Germany. These elegant baths are suffering from sick building syndrome. Walls that were formerly white are fetid yellow; blue water is slime green. It's an earthly paradise gone bad.

The Pool, Central Club Hotel, 16 Great Russell Street, London WC1 (0171- 287 7675) to 27 Feb, Tue-Sat, 12noon-6pm

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