Fredric Riskin “9/11 The Collapse of Conscience”

Ronald Feldman Fine Arts

This event has ended.

For his second exhibition at the Feldman Gallery, artist Fredric Riskin reflects on the mystery, unseen political nuances and dark pain of the 9/11 attack as it remains an unhealed wound in the American psyche.

The artist’s immersive installation explores that trauma; it examines our individual, collective, and government’s ongoing response to this catastrophe. It is the subsequent debasement of American values that gives the exhibition its title: “9/11 The Collapse of Conscience.” Both somber and dramatic, the installation presents powerful iconic imagery in different media - print, canvas, video and sound.

Riskin’s modus operandi is a unique compendium of in-depth analysis and high-tech expertise. His first one-person exhibition at the gallery in 1987, “Sub Rosa: A Psychic Journey,” examined the wilderness of mirrors between public perception of an international event and highly classified counterintelligence strategies.

The exhibition was extensively reviewed in the art and popular press, including New York Magazine, ARTnews, Artforum, The Village Voice, Washington Times, and National Public Radio. The artist currently lives in Los Angeles.

“Riskin’s recent installation of Conceptual art, Sub Rosa: A Psychic Journey, 1987, created … a modern fable of unseen powers, vague and superhuman … Although the validity of Riskin’s correspondences (whether actual or metaphorical) mount the realms of psychic perception, supersonic travel, satellite networks, and surveillance is arguable, his evocation of the collapse of space/time limits through advanced technology is remarkably interesting.”

- Carlo McCormic Artforum 1987

“Photo-conceptual story art, photo-narrative art form. Subject of first show narrated by a psychic who worked for the CIA, links the taking of hostages at a top secret US surveillance base in Iran with the pyramid of Cheops, alignments of spy planes and satellites and the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007. By the time you read the second panel, you’re hooked.”

- Kim Levin Village Voice 1987