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MEDITATIONS IN AN EMERGENCY
Mark Bradford, Christopher Fachini, Barry McGee, Roxy Paine, Paul Pfeiffer, Jonathan Pylypchuk, Tabaimo, Kara Walker, and Nari Ward. Curator: Klaus Kertess
soft cover, limp-bound
80 pages, 11 x 8"
With compact disc of music by Christopher Fachini
Price: $35.00
Special MOCAD price: $27.00*
The following is an excerpt from the introduction by guest curator Klaus Kertess:
"The title of this exhibition, Meditations in an
Emergency, has
been appropriated from a poem written by Frank O'Hara in
1957 ® when the post atomic era and the growing power of
the mass media had not yet anaesthetized more tender emotions.
'All I want is boundless love,' O'Hara could write, as he
wrapped his narcissism in just enough irony and lyric improvisation
to make it necessary to many a reader's life. The Emergency
that this exhibition's title alludes to bristles with more
public turbulence. The globalization so avidly pursued by
nations right and left has literally and figuratively enflamed
the globe it ostensibly means to ameliorate. The threat of
terrorism rides next to each of us in whatever mode of transportation
she or he chooses, and our privacy is evermore sucked up
by surveillance. In the United States, whether with the torture
of prisoners of war at Abu Ghraib or with the flagrant lies
that led us into war, our Executive branch has mocked the
very democratic principles with which it seeks to evangelize
the world.
The nine artists included in this exhibition provide no roadmap out of the quagmire. Their art is less prone to the didacticism, sometimes shaded into invective, that marked much of the art dealing with issues of race, gender, and identity in the 1980s. While these issues continue to roil our culture, the work created for this exhibition is more questioning than accusatory and is quite likely to seduce us into meditations via visual ambiguities, detours, humor, and surprises. Perhaps, as James Joyce surmised in Ulysses, 'the longest way round is the shortest way home.'
The building hosting this exhibition has been battered, first by several alterations and then by abandonment. Its open and generous proportions mandated by its original function as an automobile showroom of some twenty thousand square feet remain largely intact. At the same time, its vagrant state is a stark reminder of the decline of Detroit's auto industry. While the nine participating artists in this venture could hardly revive that industry, they enthusiastically took up the challenge of infusing new life into the space..."
* Online prices include extra $4 for shipping and handling.
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