| |
| |
Rosemairy Laing
"Bulletproofglass #4"
C-type photograph
27.6 x 44.1 in
Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York
Cornelia Hesse-Honegger
"Two negro bugs, Corimelaenidae, from Swatara, near Three Mile Island,
Pennsylvannia, USA" 1992
Watercolor
29.7 x 42 cm.
Courtesy Scalo Galerie, Zurich, NY
Kara Walker
Pastoral, 1998
Wall Painting
Courtesy Barbara Krakow Gallery, Published by Edition Schellmann, Munich-NY
Sue Coe
"Factory Farm" 1988
Watercolor, gouache and graphite on white Strathmore Bristol paper
29 x 23 in.
Courtesy Galerie St. Etienne, New York
Andrew Johnson
"The Closed Mouth, 2003"
Oil on Belgian Linen
78" x 78"
Courtesy of the Artist
|
| |
|
| |
 Patricia Bellan-Gillen
"The Speed of Your Tongue"
Oil on Board with toy train
Courtesy of the Artist |
| |
|
Flock & Fable
Animals and Identity in Contemporary Art
May 6-July 31
Opening Reception May 6, 6 – 8 pm
Artists:
Helen Altman
Patricia Bellan-Gillen
Sue Coe
Kojo Griffin
Cornelia Hesse-Honegger
Graciela Iturbide
Andrew Johnson
Rosemary Laing
Kimowan Mclain
Marc Swanson
Kara Walker
Curated by Amie Robinson
Flock & Fable: Animals and Identity in Contemporary Art will
present the works of eleven artists who use animal imagery to
investigate forms of identity: racial, sexual, spiritual, social,
political,
psychological, and moral. In identifying with the animal, the artists
create modern day fables. Traditionally, fables seek to instruct,
to inform and bestow on their audience a "moral maxim, social
duty, or political truth." They aim at the improvement of
human conduct, at revealing personal and social identities, and
do so by concealing their agenda in the guise of fictitious characters—animals.
A modern bestiary, the exhibition contains human-animal hybrids,
distorted creatures, swarms, herds and flocks, along with solitary
beasts. Viewers may find themselves reflecting on their own identities
amongst this menagerie.
Racial and sexual identities and stereotypes are conveyed in the
work of Kara Walker and Marc Swanson. Kara Walker’s provocative
silhouettes confront our perceptions of identity in terms of history,
culture, gender and race. The wall painting "Pastoral" portrays
the metaphorical "black sheep" as an ambiguous hybrid
being that is "part human, part animal, part black and part
white." It exposes stereotypes of ethnic identity, revealing
colonialist myths depicting the sexuality of black women as animalistic.
Sexual identity is also explored through personal iconography in
the work of Marc Swanson. Covering two stag heads—a symbol
of maleness—in rhinestones, he confronts coming to terms
with his own homosexuality and his politically conservative background.
Religious and spiritual identity is explored in the work of several
artists, including Patricia Bellan-Gillen, Graciela Iturbide and
Kimowan Mclain. Patricia Bellan-Gillen appropriates animal symbols
and icons from various religions. Ideas from doctrine, faith and
myth fuel the work and she invites the viewer to instinctually
find their own autobiographies in her paintings. The haunting images
of Graciela Iturbide portray Mexican cemeteries swarmed by locusts
and somber skies with flocks of birds as mythical human spirits: "I
testify the poetic dimension of men and magic, and I see a kind
of mystic of the every day life." Filling thin, swaying paper
walls with images of moths, biblical metaphors for the ephemeral,
Kimowan Mclain’s work reminds us that our existence is temporary.
He writes, "I know people like moths. They are not imbalanced
by an overly zealous devotion to light, but are equally weighted
by the substance of dark. Shall we brush these people aside as
if they were dry, brittle wings? Or clean away their dark histories
and mournful days?"
Political truths and social identity are evident in the fables
of Cornelia
Hesse-Honegger, Andrew Johnson, and Rosemary Laing. Cornelia
Hesse-Honegger sets her tales in Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and
in the shadows of international nuclear power plants and her cast
of characters
is unfortunately not fictional; it is rather exquisitely illustrated
insects suffering numerous mutations from the effects of radiation
in their environment. The frog in "The Closed Mouth," a
large oil painting
by artist Andrew Johnson, is far from becoming a fairy tale prince.
This enormously bloated creature, isolated in darkness, is an allegory
of
consumption and a metaphor for America's foreign policy.
The photographs of Rosemary Laing also portray birds in flight;
yet among them floats a
woman in a wedding dress high above the mountains of Australia.
They stir in us our desire to become animal, to fly: "Flight
sits in our consciousness as a kind of fantasy or dream. It is
a metaphorical notion.
Children dream of flying. It is a very escapist notion to be able to
fly. Super heroes fly." Upon closer inspection however, there are
bullet
holes in the woman's chest. Like Icarus, she is falling.
Emotional and psychological identities are clear in the work
of Helen Altman and Kojo Griffin. The various animals in Helen
Altman’s uniquely rendered torch drawings are isolated from
their flock, alone, defenseless, floating in a sea of white and
consumed by nothingness. The viewer can not help to feel compassion,
sympathy, and fear for the animal; and perhaps to remember a similar
feeling in their own lives, thus ultimately feeling empathy. In
his psychologically charged paintings, Kojo Griffin uses anthropomorphic
figures, human bodies with animal heads, to convey the human condition.
Placed in an ambiguous space, the characters interact and engage
us in an open, and often violent or awkward narrative. He "scratches
the surface of societal scabs, making do with the puss or what
is often left out of the fictions: shame, impotence, cruelty, hysteria,
rage, failure, hostility, anxiety, fear and the abject."
Do animals lose their identity, however, if we impose upon them
our own? In his book The Postmodern Animal, Steve Baker writes
that, "the representational, symbolic and rhetorical uses
of the animal must be understood to carry as much conceptual weight
as any idea we may have of the ‘real’ animal, and must
be taken just as seriously." Sue Coe addresses the reduction
of the animal in her series Porkopolis. In sketches and drawings
created in slaughterhouses (where photography is forbidden) she
gives names and honors the identities of the otherwise tagged,
numbered masses of the factory farm industry. Her work questions
criticism that animal imagery is too sentimental, claiming that
these accusations are made only to "prevent an outcry against
cruelty, to silence criticism against bad science."
For more information or to request a digital press kit, please
contact the Chelsea Art Museum
at 212-255-0719, ext.112
|
