Exhibition Dates: March 3 – March 31, 2007
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 3 from 6–8 pm
Gallery Location: 432 Julia Street, New Orleans, LA 70130
Hours: Monday–Saturday, 10 am–5 pm
Contact Info: 504.522.1999; arthurrogergallery.com
The Arthur Roger Gallery is pleased to present Pattern: The Order of Chaos an exhibition of new prints, paintings and sculpture by Dawn DeDeaux. The exhibition will be on view at Arthur Roger Gallery, located at 432 Julia Street, from March 3 – March 31, 2007. The gallery will host an opening on Saturday, March 3 from 6-8 pm.
Pattern: The Order of Chaos brings together works created by the artist just prior to Katrina which were destroyed and are now recreated together with post-Katrina works. Common throughout the exhibition are Dawn DeDeaux’s observations of nature, and in the case of the new work, the patterns found in nature. The varied pieces are all drawn from representation but in instances appear seemingly abstract.
In the wake of Katrina, DeDeaux contemplated the roots of abstract art buried in disaster. The artist feels, “Through such a catastrophe we are presented with the ‘material’ of our lives deconstructed, and the mirror of our relativity splintered into patterns anew.” The artist felt the sacred mounds of debris found throughout the ravaged city of New Orleans beckoned for new interpretation and DeDeaux published a deeply personal statement about her response to the destruction of Katrina in the November, 2005 issue of Art in America.
DeDeaux feels, “Even in the paradoxical cruelty of nature’s wrath, it offers a sublime organic beauty.” Her new works in Pattern: The Order of Chaos examine the patterns found in trees, but also flood marks, hurricanes and mold. For her these patterns of the platonic and the horrific share an equal beauty. To observe such beauty is to satisfy hope; it is to understand that light emerges from darkness.
DeDeaux believes that this exhibition further substantiates the difficulties in classifying her work. She is best known as a ‘conceptual artist,’ but Pattern: The Order of Chaos unabashedly presents a wide range of media from complex digital imaging and light sculpture to mud paintings created in the weeks following Katrina.
Unable to access her computer to resume work on digital imaging, DeDeaux fed her inflamed artistic impulse with the tons of new art materials before her in the altered landscape. She is now joyous that, “Katrina reunited me with my earliest artistic roots as a painter and occasional sculptor.” The most recent works included in the exhibition forge her highly technological and primal expression toward a new direction.
DeDeaux states, “In the random aftermath of nature’s force, we are given metaphors for the wanton patterns of our origin as it rambles through chaos theories, quantum mechanics and webs of string. We are reminded that if nature doesn’t humble you by its breathtaking beauty and infinite intricacy, it can always find another way.”
Dawn DeDeaux was born and continues to reside in New Orleans. She is one of America’s pioneering artists in new media. Her work is the in-depth subject of the concluding chapter of Discipline and Photographs by James Huginin of the Chicago Art Institute. Works by DeDeaux have been exhibited widely, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Armand Hanmer Museum in Los Angeles, The Baltimore Museum of Contemporary Art, The New Orleans Museum of Art, The Peace Museum, Chicago and Delfina Trust in London, England.