George Rahme "Riot of Life"
Fred Torres Collaborations
This event has ended.
Fred Torres Collaborations presents Riot of Life, George Rahme’s second solo exhibition in New York.
In Riot of Life, Rahme is working primarily in large-scale collage landscape. He uses a variety of found materials as a base, from discarded wood panels and antique store landscapes to glossy print advertisements, and from there builds up intricate assemblages of images. His source material comprises everything from tawdry covers of romance novels to photographs of buildings in the aftermath of disaster.
The backdrop of industrial Detroit lends context to Rahme’s meticulously assembled collages, which often concern themselves with themes of ruin and rebirth. Flower of the Moon (2011) is a veritable landfill of imagery, apparently haphazard but, in reality, constructed to the point of documentation. In a similar vein, works like F-350 (2010) and Shady Lady (2011) read like newspaper reportage on natural disasters that tear our day-to-day reality to scraps—scraps like those from which Rahme constructs, rather than deconstructs, his pieces.
In this regard, a thread of hope runs through even the most apocalyptic of Rahme’s collages, suggesting a phoenix rather than a forest fire. A motif of disembodied, reaching arms pervades Riot of Life, as in the work Leach (2010), representing perhaps a collective yearning, reaching toward a rediscovery made possible by having been disconnected.
Rahme lives and works outside of Detroit. He attended the College for Creative Studies in Lansing, graduating with High Honors in 2007. In addition to his career as a working artist, Rahme is an accomplished DJ and musician who has toured the United States and Europe and makes frequent appearances in the thriving Detroit underground music scene. He has exhibited at the Oakland University Art Gallery, the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, MI, and at the Detroit Artists Market.
[Image: George Rahme "No Wonders of Life on Earth" (2010) Paper on board, 6.5 x 16.25 in.]
Media
Schedule
from September 08, 2011 to October 08, 2011
Opening Reception on 2011-09-08 from 18:00 to 20:00