May DeViney “Madonnas, Monsters, and Marie Curie”
Viridian Artists, Inc.
This event has ended.
Viridian Artists Inc. presents the exhibition “Madonnas, Monsters, and Marie Curie” a mixed media exhibition by May DeViney.
DeViney is creatively inspired by a number of politically tinged issues and continues to surprise with each presentation, opening up whole new worlds of thought for viewers to consider as they meander through the artworks presented. She creates with no holds barred.
The artist has, in the past & now, demonstrated an ongoing interest in workers and domestic drudgery, often dangerously spoofing the grateful, subservient attitudes expected of those who work, most often exemplified by the Madonna. No subject is taboo to her, and her themes can overlap as when she shows the Madonna doing the laundry, nuns or burka clothed women wearing the American flag, as they remind us of the mysteries of religious practice & the ongoing situation of women.
At Viridian Artists, DeViney will show a variety of new work in the form of mixed media constructions, paintings and installations. She highlights a spectrum of issues affecting both sexes and the 99% strata. This international provocateur continues to prove her reputation as “the thinking woman’s Red Grooms”.
DeViney has won many awards for a past series she did based on “home shrines” which were created to exalt and commemorate not the usual saints, but instead, the common “everywoman”. She is the one who has suffered in all cultures from the expectation of perfection and purity enforced upon her by both society and herself.
In “Unauthorized Autobiography” a show from 2000, DeViney made us privy to not only what she intended us to see, but, realized that she also unknowingly revealed “secrets”, and those “secrets”, those unintended revelations, can be as telling as the subject matter at hand. The same holds true in ordinary life, especially in this world of social media, where unknowingly, we often reveal more than we intend.
DeViney is drawn to used and aged materials, allowing us to view the art through the haze of accumulated historical value. Whether it is clothing, furniture or a gynecologist’s examining table, she is able to resurrect and transform the objects she touches with new meaning more fitting to today’s world. Her costume installations are partially inspired by the work of British artist Yinka Shonibare, but too they are emerging out of her own creative imagination.
[Imaga: May DeViney "Big Leg Madonna"]
Media
Schedule
from April 03, 2012 to April 21, 2012
Opening Reception on 2012-04-07 from 16:00 to 19:00