Duncan Hannah "Country Life and Other Collages"
Half Gallery
This event has ended.
Duncan Hannah began making collages in the late 1970s, inspired by artists such as Joe Brainard, Kurt Schwitters and Peter Blake. There is a tangibility and sensuality to collage, a multi-layered and complex medium that suggests many histories and experiences – ranging from art, literature, design, music, history and pornography, as in Hannah’s intricate yet simple collages: a classic black and white nude amid a National Geographic Magazine cover from 1926; the profile of a topless woman, her eyes close, mouth slightly open against a wide blue sky with creamy white clouds reminiscent of Magritte and a heading that reads "Country Life." In another collage, Christine Keeler, the British beauty notorious for the scandalous Profumo affair of 1963 (Keeler was intimately involved with John Profumo, Secretary of State for War and at the same time, the reputed mistress of a Russian spy), innocently poses in a plaid bathing suit with the British Union jack flag edging at the top and newspaper lines behind her, reading playful things such as "Sweets and Ginger" and "Real Thrills."
Hannah’s collages are provocative collisions, some subtle and lithe, others suggestively sexy. The collages engage in a dialogue with the past, from 19th century romanticism to a little bit of Pop ardor, to more personal inspirations, such as Hannah’s inheriting of girly material from artist Richard Merkin, used in various of the collages on view. These works are labyrinths on paper of Hannah’s imaginary and real world of friends, lovers, self-portraits, movie stars, artists, writers, etc. A conversation between a myriad of elements: tickets, photos, newspaper and magazine clippings, texts, decorative patterns, drawing and painting.
The work is beautifully haunting, as are his paintings, two of which will be shown along with the collages to tease the viewer into a whole other world. These works are palimpsests of memory and experience, individual and collective, real and imaginary. Part of the mystery that rests in these collages is how independent details are fused onto one page to create a lucid piece that looks like it was always meant to be together.
Media
Schedule
from June 01, 2011 to June 21, 2011
Opening Reception on 2011-06-01 from 18:00 to 20:00