Robert Priseman "No Human Way to Kill"

WHITE BOX

poster for Robert Priseman "No Human Way to Kill"

This event has ended.

This spring, White Box in association with Firstsite Contemporary Art is hosting a highly challenging exhibition of paintings and drawings of execution chambers in the USA by the critically acclaimed artist Robert Priseman. The exhibition is a part of Robert Priseman's extended "Modern Means of Execution" project which has been four years in the making. It was initially inspired by Nick Broomfield's television documentary on the execution of serial killer Aileen Wuornos. "I was working on paintings of hospital interiors when I saw the documentary, and I became aware of similarities between the iconography of execution facilities and those of medical institutions,” explains Priseman. Originally shown at the Dazed Gallery in London, the book was launched in London and Paris in October with the support of Firstsite Contemporary Art. It opens with an account from Rev. Cathy Harrington whose daughter Leslie Ann Mazzara was lost to murder. Cathy negotiated a life sentence for her daughter’s murderer, Eric Copple, who had potentially been facing the death sentence. This is followed by a view of life from inside death row at San Quentin by PEN winner Anthony Ross who was a former Crips gang member alongside Stanley ‘Tookie’ Williams. Then former Texas prison Warden and Peabody recipient, Jim Willett, who oversaw 89 executions gives a detailed description of how an execution is carried out. A visit to see Robert Priseman's paintings and etchings of American execution chambers is no easy experience. Standing in front of the almost life-size paintings, you, as the visitor, are the only person in the painting and therefore the execution 'room'. There is no escaping from a full-on confrontation with the cruelty of the death penalty and the reality of your own mortality.

[Image: Robert Priseman "Lethal Injection Gurney" (2008)]

Media

Schedule

from March 15, 2010 to March 30, 2010

Opening Reception on 2010-03-23 from 18:00 to 19:00
Followed by panel: 7-9 pm.

Artist(s)

Robert Priseman

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