“Dogs & Cats: 21 Artists Unleashed and on the Prowl” Exhibition
Mark Miller Gallery
[Image: Caren Canier "West Hall III"]
This event has ended.
The Gallery invites dogs and cats to be its special guests. Animal treats will be served.
The Mark Miller Gallery presents Dogs and Cats, an exhibition curated by artists Nancy Grimes and Leslie Lalehzar, which brings together works by 21 artists, diverse in style but united by a common theme.
With their distinctive characteristics and personality quirks, and their intimate relationship to humans, dogs and cats have provided rich artistic material throughout the ages. The ancient Egyptians represented their god of the dead—Anubis—in canine form and depicted the Goddess Bastet with the head of a cat. In the 20th century, William Wegman’s muse—his weimaraner, Man Ray—became famous as the long-suffering subject of countless artistic jokes, while Balthus is well known for his cameo appearances as a lecherous cat in many of his most controversial paintings.
As repositories of cultural and societal values, dogs and cats continue to provide engaging and provocative subject matter for contemporary art. Each of the 21 artists in the exhibition taps into the feelings and attitudes inspired by our pets in order to reveal something about ourselves.
Caren Canier’s “West Hall III” shows two dogs playing tug-of-war in a park, surrounded by a cast of eccentric passers-by. Thoroughly immersed in the momentary pleasure of mock battle, the dogs seem just as self-absorbed as their human counterparts. Doug Wirls’ chalk drawing, “Dog Run II,” on the other hand, depicts the literally dog-eat-dog world of animals confined in a constricted space. There is nothing playful about his vicious circle of canines and their all too human struggle for supremacy.
David Carbone inverts the natural order by making man subservient to beast. In his whimsical ink wash, “The Fitting,” our tendency to anthropomorphize our pets takes on a fairy-tale-like quality as a costumer busily takes the measurements of a cat, whose human characteristics—erect posture, cinched waist and full skirt—coexist with large clumsy paws. Iona Fromboluti’s predatory cat, Paris, on the other hand, offers grisly homage to its mistress. Her painting, “Gift of Paris” takes an ironic look at her pet’s atavistic hunting behavior by displaying, rather than the cat itself, its disturbing tribute—a dead hummingbird —limp in its owner’s hand.
The artists in “Dogs and Cats” exploit and subvert our assumptions about our pets, who never cease to surprise and mystify, from Leslie Lalehzar’s goofy, exuberant pooch in “Billie Maple” Masback’s bristling Halloween cat in “Bad Luck.”
As a tribute to the animals we love, Mark Miller Gallery will donate 10% of all sales from the exhibition to The Humane Society of New York, which will bring adoptable dogs to the reception. Since 1904 the Humane Society of New York has been a presence in New York City, reaching out to animals in need when illness, injury or homelessness strikes. Open seven days a week, its hospital and The Vladimir Horowitz and Wanda Toscanini Horowitz Adoption Center now help more than 38,000 animals annually, and their numbers continue to grow. www.HumaneSocietyNY.org
Media
Schedule
from April 05, 2015 to May 03, 2015
Opening Reception on 2015-04-05 from 14:00 to 18:00