 | OPTIMISTIC AMERICAN DISCORDS
A New Generation of Artists from the United States
Finissage: Saturday 01st May 2010
curated by Edward Lucie-Smith and Roni Feldman
Jon Barwick, Roni Feldman, Elizabeth Ferry, Ryan Peter Miller, Grant Vetter, Casey Vogt
The six young American artists in this show have formed a group that they have named ‘Cacophonic’. Forming groups is, of course, the traditional way in which young artists band together in order to get a hearing. Think, for example, of the Futurists at the start of the 20th century and of the Surrealists who followed them. Roni Feldman, a member of the group and my co-curator, says that their work is a reaction to a decade that began with planes crashing into the World Trade Center in New York, and ended with an equally resounding economic crash – a period of “complexity and dissonance, marked by a clamorous rise in technology, especially the technology of information, as well as by wars and other forms of disaster.” He and his colleagues engage with a world of conflicting values, in the visual arts as well as in politics, and welcome the uproar that results. “We are wary of didacticism.” He says, “and recognize that a work of art is, first and foremost, a unique sensory experience. The balance between content and physical presence in our work reflects an enduring optimism in the face of the odds that we believe is typical of our generation of American artists.”
Edward Lucie-Smith
Image: Casey Vogt „Against the Grain“,house paint, collage on panel, 61cm*61cm, 2009
Berlin Collective presents Artist Talks moderated by Marc Glöde and Sophie Eliot Sunday 21st March 2010 at 5 pm
Werkstattgalerie
Eisenacher Str. 6
10777 Berlin
Phone: +49.30.21002158
Mail: info@werkstattgalerie.org
Near Nollendorfplatz: Tube U1-U4, Bus M19
Open: Tu-Fr 12-8 pm, Sa 12-6pm |
