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I will be alright
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I will be alright NEW GALLERY IN CINCINNATI OPENS FIRST EXHIBITION Cincinnati, Ohio – The group exhibition I will be alright, is the inaugural presentation for the Cincinnati-based gallery, Country Club. I will be alright explores utopic/dystopic themes with a sense of cautious and/or conflicted optimism. The exhibition title itself suggests a hopeful look into the future while simultaneously implying that some type of troubling event or impending trauma must first be overcome. The show features artists investigating the theme in a wide array of strategies and media. Kamrooz Aram, Beth Campbell, Jacob Dyrenforth, João Paulo Feliciano, Harmony Korine, Aaron Morse, Shana Moulton, Kambui Olujimi, John Pilson and SIMPARCH complete the roster of artists participating in the premier exhibition. Jacob Dyrenforth’s labor-intensive drawings depict celebrity-obsessed stalkers and self-destructive rock stars – exploring the dark side of fame and the morbid curiosity brought on by tragedy. Tackling a distinctly other type of celebrity, Harmony Korine absurdly pairs ET and Osama bin-Laden in a series of prints individually altered with spray paint and text. An indictment of Hollywood? Steven Speilberg? Or does it run in the other direction - an attempt to soften bin-Laden’s image with the lovable alien? Korine’s spray paint markings of tears, swastikas and football cheers further obscure any simple reading of the image. John Pilson’s wandering video narrative, 500, remains resolutely abstract as the characters move the action forward in an intricately connected series of vignettes. The location, a claustrophobic hotel suite, provides the backdrop for, among other events, an argument between an auteur director and his lead actor, a provocative rendition of a jazz standard, bucolic hotel art cast in an ominous light and a young woman regressing into her childhood. In Shana Moulton’s video series, Whispering Pines, the artist plays the central character interacting with a constructed world of New Age products and self-help remedies. In a poignant series of misadventures, the comically hapless protagonist seeks and finds ecstatic enlightenment. Kamrooz Aram’s lush painting, Special Celebrations, also suggests a certain conflicted vision of enlightenment. His psychedelic canvas evokes video game landscapes, religious iconography and military imagery in equal measure. Kambui Olujimi’s thickly painted ”portraits” of clouds are abstractly, poetically positioned as wanted posters. These images, once deciphered, allude to the general, vague fear of the unknown that still permeates America since 9/11. Aaron Morse’s visual vocabulary commingles history, nostalgia, politics, the American frontier and mythology. Repositioning American Revolution soldiers and Native Americans as is they were super-heroic, comic book characters Morse suggests that revisionist tactics are actively shaping contemporary culture. He also turns this lens on that most hallowed moment in American politics – the Kennedy administration. Beth Campbell, known for her quasi-narrative drawings of her potential future, transforms those drawings into an even more open-ended 3-dimensions. Taking the form of a branching mobile, the sculpture makes physical the ranging consequences of each minute decision. João Paulo Feliciano’s Little Electrical Poem is a sculpture that functions as an optical illusion and as a shifting reflection on the nature of duality and reality. The art/architecture collective SIMPARCH often seeks to create environments for loosely prescribed social activities. Storage Headboard (after John G. Shea) is a sculptural element taken from their 2005 installation at the Tate Modern in London. The installation paired plywood furniture fabricated by following instructions from a 1960’s how-to manual with ready-made target posters used for law enforcement training. This collision of source material suggests a domestic environment rife with danger and hidden pitfalls. About Country Club: FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT |
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