EXHIBITION DATES: October 1 – October 29, 2011
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, October 1st, 6 – 9 pm (in conjunction with Art for Art’s Sake)
LOCATION: Arthur Roger Gallery, 432 Julia Street, New Orleans, LA 70130
GALLERY HOURS: Monday – Saturday, 10 am – 5 pm
CONTACT INFO: 504.522.1999. www.arthurrogergallery.com
The Arthur Roger Gallery is pleased to present “Catholic Sin,” an exhibition of new photographs and sculpture by John Waters. The exhibition will be on view from October 1st – 29th at the Arthur Roger Gallery located at 432 Julia Street. Mr. Waters will be present at the opening reception hosted by the gallery on Saturday, October 1st from 6 to 9 pm in conjunction with “Art for Art’s Sake.” Additionally, the artist will lead a walk-through of his exhibition on Saturday, October 1st at 1 pm.
Catholic Sin, 2009. C-print, 27.5 x 75 inches
Using an insider’s bag of tricks and trade lingo, Waters celebrates the excess of the movie industry. Word and image play permeate Waters’ work, and the movie industry and its various sleights of hand are a common target. Always ambitious and playful, some of the works are condensed narratives or “little movies” as Waters calls them. Waters wickedly juxtaposes images from films and television that he captured by photographing his television set as they play. His approach originated with a desire to retrieve stills from his own movies and developed into an appreciation for the overlooked and misrecalled.
Included in the exhibition is “Rear Projection” which is a movie term for the process whereby a foreground action is combined with a background scene filmed earlier to give the impression the actors are on location when they are, in fact, working inside a studio. In John Waters’ latest work, this artificial and outdated visual effect is embraced and taken to extremes.
Waters has said, “I’m concerned that people don’t remember movies; they remember stills that they’ve seen over and over in books so I try to photograph things in movies that you are never supposed to see. Really, it’s about writing and editing. I think up each of these pieces and then I have to go find the images that make a new narrative which many times is the opposite of or has nothing to do with what the director really began with.”
John Waters was born in 1946 in Baltimore, MD, where he continues to live and work. Exhibitions include the Swiss Institute, New York, NY, (2009) the Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, MO (2008), the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (1999), the New Museum of Contemporary Art (2004), The Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, and the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA (2004-2006). His filmography includes Pink Flamingos (1972), Desperate Living (1977), Polyester (1981), Hairspray (1988) and Pecker (1998).
For additional information contact the gallery at 504.522.1999 or visit our web site www.arthurrogergallery.com.