After years of making large charcoal drawings, James Drake (born 1946) found himself making drawings that were predominately white and airy, from which he extracted images using an exacto knife. The red charcoal drawings also collected here were made in response to the white cut out drawings. Published on the heels of a successful retrospective, this is the first monograph on Drake’s drawings.
Change happens. That’s not news, but lately the pace seems to be picking up in often perplexing ways. Such is the proposition that propels Luis Cruz Azaceta in his Shifting States expo at Arthur Roger Gallery.
Open only at night, DeDeaux’s installation riffs on Toole’s evocation of fate and furies. The artist uses the three-story mansion to great effect. Off each story is a balcony, behind which are French doors and windows. Using various staging setups, including mannequins costumed with dunce hats that look weirdly like figures from the Inquisition, and a room full of masks and odd artifacts, she sets up a fun-house tableau on each floor. There are rooms you can enter and rooms that you view from the center of the courtyard, which boasts a wagon with a fountain that has distinct masturbatory connotations, consistent with the Reilly character. The rooms have video projections or staged lighting, which makes a dramatic impact. Looking up from the grounds of the courtyard, you can see ethereal, spinning videos. In a large downstairs room is a dance video, if one can call it that. DeDeaux cast the contemporary diva of New Orleans bounce music, Katey Red, to play the role of Goddess Fortuna, accompanied by two backup dancers as “the Wheelettes”—to spin the wheels of our fate. The energetic figures in the video have an uncanny optical effect of appearing disembodied in the outdoor courtyard through a device of reflection. I watched entranced through the windows of the room at the courtyard; it was truly disturbing, and inspiring. Worked from its literary source, DeDeaux’s zany, smart and wildly imaginative installation goes far beyond illustration to become an atmosphere that is indeed inhabited by the Goddess Fortuna.
from ogdenmuseum.org The Past Still Present: Photographs by David Halliday at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art On view January 19 – April 8, 2012 A master of light, New…
From CubanArtNews.org, January 9, 2012 Luis Cruz Azaceta in New Orleans. From collapsing economies to the consequences of climate change, the instability of global affairs has been, for many of…
