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Radioactive
spring: Sarah de Teliga revisits nature. Tania
Mouraud: Martin Luther King speeches, nails and brass rings, violins, accordions,
and computer generated sounds: an ode to music. Emily
Harvey: a life in
fluxus. Swept
off my feet: Keith Donovan in poetic frame on Jerome
Borel's Paris inspired paintings. America
it seems, is holding vast quantities of Codeine,
Tiger Balm, Tylenol, Preparation H, Chanel No. 5, and Vaseline. Fear
and painting in America: flagging multiculturalism. Jeremy
Stigter's Japanese landscapes: an empire of emptiness. Strange
money: Peggy Preheim
makes a buck. The
lonely contents of a strange world are undeniably ours: Caterina
Verde in Eindhoven. "This
coming together between video, photography and paint involves the environment
and myself. The video footage acts like a paintbrush" says Valentina
Loi. [Warhol
Factory hand] Billy Name once said of Ray Johnson
that he "wasn't a person, he was a collage, a sculpture." Exacting
images of people in the celebrated and banal act
of wearing clothes. Could this be you? James Startt focuses on Uniforms. On
a sun-bleached rooftop a stone’s throw from the Villa Borghese
in Rome, romantic
minimalist Livia
Signorini unfurls
a “quilt” made of Horvath candy wrappers. Painting is either back, or, never left the building.
A discussion around the state of art today. Did
Picabia prefigure our current
human-technology
questions? MADE
IN JAPAN: KILLER CUTENESS INVADES PARIS "What
I do is not really art, not really furniture," chairs
from the throne to the unsitable. Michael
Mandiberg is selling everything. Everything is art, everything is for
sale "...Images
of the Towers being struck and then falling in a plume of smoke." One illusion
of Heaven against other illusions of Heaven.
Fought to the death?" A
letter from Paris, from Basel. Art 32 Basel
reviewed. Swiss
artist thomas hirschorn, in association with
the Pompidou Centre in Paris.
Jean-Noel Laszlo: liberty
is still controversial.
Jonathan Horowitz's interactive low- technology web
enabled art show reviewed.
part
1 Art, Paris, porn and the web. part
2
Looks at art and porn in the context of still imagery and film. part
3
asks: is sex in art cultural satisfaction? |
letter
from paris : : matthew
rose
  
Freedom
light
fear
& painting in america When
Jasper Johns' Flag paintings were first exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery
in 1958, the art world immediately seized upon the inherent irony: symbol as object.
Johns' reduction par excellence of an American icon – something so familiar
it was often invisible - turned into a life-sized artwork. recast the boundaries
of image-making, and blew apart the notion of 'representation.' These paintings,
morphed into dozens of variations (the first flag work was white, painted in 1954)
were, however, hardly a 'patriot act.' Rather, their duty was to literal, underlying
structure - and they helped launch a generation of artists intent upon further
reductions, giving rise to Minimalism in the decade that followed.
The
times were different, of course. Then, we only feared nuclear Armageddon, burying
ourselves in school fallout shelters only to return to classes, 15 minutes later
to continue with our finger paintings. Did we ever think that pushing paint around
could change the world? That's the essential question Armenian-born Chicago-based
artist Shanoor (he resides in Northwest Indiana) poses with his red, white and
blue 'Freedom Series' canvases.
Like everyone else who lives in the United States, Shanoor's roots are elsewhere,
a sincere fact he uses to reinvent himself, particularly in this age of fear and
loathing. But instead of ripping up earth, Shanoor mixes paint and applies it
in a way that on his canvases hope will spring forth. The 55-year old artist is
calling for his own revolution, managing bits of Old Glory in a series of explosions
- what he calls Extreme Art - as a way to plant and replant himself on the fertile
ground he calls home. 
Fabric of our life 2002
Shanoor's iconography
employs the stars and bangles, the bands of color and repositions them in a succinct
cascade of feeling. Understandably, September 11th changed his entire outlook
on his adopted country. One must not forget the appeal America has long had for
others seeking opportunity and the freedom to express their lives in new ways.
The meaning imbued in the flag is prescient for this artist, and the variations
of that experience, such as Fabric Of Our Life (2002) with its vibrating
dreamlike presence, bear witness to an inner faith and an outward fascination
with American realities. The canvas glows; it has motion, and in effect, is something
of a heartbeat.
Reentry Fusion 2003
Reentry Fusion (2003)
is perhaps the boldest of this series: A whirlpool of energy claims the American
flag into a gyrating vortex. One is persuaded that the 'melting pot' myth, a staple
of the American Dream, is often both a violent and pleasurable process from which
no one (not even those who visit America from abroad during a summer vacation)
can escape.
The majority of Shanoor's recent acrylic works on canvas
since 2001 reinvigorate the artist's potent design sense (he runs Devarj Design
agency with his wife, Silva). These high-end graphic talents permit him to literally
stretch and bend the stars and stripes to a different set a meanings and at the
same time, wrap himself in a new kind of flag. Unlike most people who bury themselves
in Old Glory for political reasons, Shanoor's point is multi-culturalism, pluralism,
e pluribus unum. His interest is the promise, not the premise (often maligned
and misconstrued) of America.
Many artists have re-hung flags, or reconstituted
them in an effort to push away the concept of nation and replace it with a concept
of world. French artist, Jean-Pierre Raynaud purchases flags and simply restates
them as objects, stretching them onto frames. The Italian artist, Alighiero e
Boetti (1940 -1994) embroidered cloth into a world map tapestry, (Mappa del Mondo,1978),
with each country represented by the sign of its flag, a statement of geography
and power. With the reunification of Germany, the changing boundaries in the Middle
East and elsewhere, his 'mappa' has since become something of a time capsule,
an ode to global power flux.
Shanoor realizes a vastly different vision.
"Using flag iconography is a way to manage the hidden, oblique side of life,"
he says, "and to recreate a language of tolerance and understanding."
The artist was greatly changed (as we all were) at the carnage and malice the
world experienced nearly three years ago. Fear was rampant, confusion was commonplace.
Coming to America, he suggests, is a process that involves a continuous absorption
of opposites, a dialectic of urgency. Shanoor's is a terribly noble project, brought
off with élan and clarity. Certainly, the artist has the volition to remake
his American experience in paint and canvas one of power and joy and yes, beauty,
and place fear where it belongs: in the hearts of those who remain steadfast in
their willful ignorance.
Matthew Rose is an artist and writer based
in Paris. E: mistahrose@yahoo.com
SHANOOR: Freedom
Exhibition at NIAA Atrium
Northern Indiana Art Association, Visual and Performing
Art Center
1040 Ridge Road, Munster, Indiana 46321
Opening June 18th (5pm
- 8pm). Exhibition: Through August 3, 2004
Web site: www.cherishfreedom.com
Contact: Silva Devarj / Devarj Associates, Inc. E-mail: devarj@devarj.com
Tel: +1.219/923-0906
affiliates
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