Liliana Angulo, Negramente, C Print

Jen Trausch, 20 x 24 Polaroid

THINK AGAIN, Salt in The Wound (The NAFTA Effect), Documentation of Public Video Projection

Karen Moss, What Remains, Walnut Ink on paper

Jeannie Simms, Sonata for two instruments:the space between my legs, Video Sculpture.

List of Participants

Patte Loper
Jeannie Simms
Karen Moss
Liliana Angulo
Jennifer Trausch
THINK AGAIN (S.A. Bachman and David John Attyah).


Fresh Produce presents:
Claudine Anrather

Claudine Anrather, Sheep, oil on canvas

Meconio
Curated by
Maria Magdalena Campos Pons

October 26 - Nov. 23, 2007

October 26 Opening Reception:
6:00 pm :: Gallery Talk
5:00-8:00 pm :: Reception

Ours are conflicting times, also promising times. New energies and substantial new directions are in the mix.  I came across the different bodies of work in this exhibition as I asked myself some questions such as: do I remember that we are at war? How often do I pose the question and what is the implication of the answer to my life?
Art galleries are spaces for contemplation and many times quiet mirrors and mute vocal chords reflecting society’s inner cries in times of conflict. Artists are interpreters and repositories for untold discourses. Artists absorb the questions of a time and the work they propose often contains some disquieting revelations. At GASP our commitment is to bring ideas and artists whose work precisely constructs discourses in this realm to the forefront.  
 Meconio is described as a dark, odorless, greenish substance of thick density. That is the visual skin, the perceptual quality of it; but most importantly, Meconio is a life forming substance. It is the residual element of the primal energy that constitutes the sustaining link from mother to fetus; in essence, the residual data from the gestation of a new time/life/form.
 So... we are at war and the situation is sticky, with great viscosity and lost edges. The artists in this show are posing serious questions concerning the times but their works do so with humor as well. Liliana Angulo’s series “Negramente” is her first exhibition in the United States. How current and close to home is her inquiry on the state of blackness in Colombia! Angulos’ “negrita” is even blacker having many cousins in the United States not to mention the world. This lady is blacker than black, stickier than sticky and if you touch her you are going to be tinted/tainted.
  Optimism is present in Jennifer Trausch Polaroid series. Trausch’s subjects are exhausted but a potential option for salvation lingers in the dim light that illuminates their surroundings.  Even romanticism has a place as Jeannie Simms recaptures such inner dialogue with “maestro” Bergman and his classic film, Persona. Yes, there is irony, too. Karen Moss foresees an after-land were mutants and the everlasting McDonald’s Golden Arches are sole survivors of the time we knew.
 How could things have taken such a turn? How distracted were we in our daily routines and other trivia while everything was losing edges in plain sight? Both Claudine Anrather and Patte Loper saw the danger and the beauty in a pristine white darkness, a dangerous excessive whiteness of some sort. Those black sheep, always in the sacrificial path, like the lives of all trapped in the borders’ conflicts of North vs. South, East vs. West, First World vs. Third World, are rightfully encapsulated in the THINK AGAIN outdoor projection.
  Yet there is an overall sense of another time, if possible, that yes, we are at war and there is a dense soiled ground, but potentially a new life is in gestation... at least the body of work here is a testimony.