Justin McAllister "Mirror-Signals"
Josee Bienvenu Gallery
This event has ended.
The exhibition focuses on paintings and drawings of fires that were set and documented by the artist in northeastern Pennsylvania during the summers of 2007 and 2008.
Burning garbage (couches, La-Z-Boy chairs, piles of tree limbs and paper waste) is a common practice in rural communities, in the form of “controlled burns”. The risk associated with setting the fires is an exhilarating aesthetic experience on its own that Justin McAllister translates into paintings. The works celebrate joyful bonfires, where objects seem to be on the brink of dissolving without ever quite relinquishing their recognizably solid origins. Nothing becomes more abstract than the reality of a fire.
The feel of estrangement creates a romantic narrative for the work to develop in. The paintings reference the Hudson River School, its loaded iconography rich in symbolism and its masterful technique. Like playing with fire, embracing today, a seemingly exhausted and forbidden mode of making art is dangerous and attractive. The headlights of cars passing in the background are warning signals of the awareness that the paintings are not swept up in the nostalgia for the majestic landscapes but rather are theaters of manipulated information, mirror-signals of our time.
Media
Schedule
from April 04, 2009 to May 06, 2009
Opening Reception on 2009-04-04 from 18:00 to 20:00