Exhibition Dates: May 6 – June 30, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 6 from 6–9 pm, in conjunction with Jammin’ on Julia
Gallery Location: 432 Julia Street, New Orleans, LA 70130
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 am–5 pm
Contact Info: 504.522.1999; arthurrogergallery.com
The Arthur Roger Gallery is pleased to present Neapolitan (Comic Book Diplomacy, Go Cups and Water Bottle Buoys), an exhibition of recent work by Christopher Saucedo. The exhibition will be on view at Arthur Roger Gallery, located at 432 Julia Street, from May 6 – June 30, 2017. The gallery will host an opening with the artist in attendance on Saturday, May 6 from 6-9pm, in conjunction with Jammin’ on Julia.
Neapolitan, 2017 | Ink jet print, Edition of 10 + AP | 20 x 28 inches
In the realm of confections, Neapolitan signifies three side-by-side flavors of ice cream in the same container. This exhibition, Christopher Saucedo’s first with the gallery, is also a rich tripartite of distinct, concurrently created bodies of work: Comic Book Diplomacy, Go Cups and Water Bottle Buoys. The artwork is unified by the artist’s preoccupation with water and fire, as revealed in the imagery and technical processes used. Handmade paper, chain-stitched embroidery, delicately balanced mobiles and carved polystyrene are all in play as they activate the popular imagery of comic books and drinking containers with global maps both real and imagined.
Comic Book Diplomacy is a rearrangement of international editions of American Super Hero comic books collaged in provocative manners that reinterpret the subject and present compelling visual, social and geo-political narratives. The primordial tension between fire and water elevates the humble drinking container in Go Cups, a reference to the plastic cups given by bars to patrons in New Orleans so that they may take drinks off premises. Saucedo uses fire to literally brand the image of these containers designed to hold liquid into handmade paper. Water Bottle Buoys (sculpture that floats) came about as Saucedo considered the duality of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ water. Plastic water bottles, although vessels of clean drinking water, also create an environmental dilemma with their continual disposal and accumulation in our oceans. Saucedo argues that since Styrofoam never decomposes it just might be the new material of statuary. With global warming and rising sea levels, why not make sculpture that floats – in this case a self portrait in his exact volume, as a plastic water bottle – anchored to a stone.
Christopher Saucedo was born in 1964 in Brooklyn, NY. He received his B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts, New York in 1986 and his M.F.A. from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1988. After attending the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, he did post-graduate work at the Queens University at Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has exhibited nationally and internationally and is the recipient of numerous grants, including from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Joan Mitchell Arts Foundation. Saucedo currently teaches at Adelphi University in New York.