Curated by Tony Campbell
U.N.O. gallery, 2429 St Claude Ave, New Orleans.
Opening reception 6-9pm Sat 14th Sept 2019, then Sat & Sun only from 12-5 pm
Home Passages, Jim Richard, Collage, 2013.
Collage is the noble conquest of the irrational, the coupling of two realities, irreconcilable in appearance, upon a plane which apparently does not suit them. Max Ernst
Our world is so full of images, it is totally understandable to feel reluctant to add yet more, better still the urge to collect, curate and collage from this image mountain. To tease out new associations, conjure new meanings, setting one image against another, to tear and cut an image out of its time and place to become present in the now.
Although collage history makes a case for China 200BC being the birth place of the medium, modern collage’s invention is attributed to Braque and Picasso’s Analytical Cubism circa 1910. Focusing on media rather than narrative, pasting shape and texture to emphasize flatness. Dadaist Kurt Schwitters used collage like bricks and mortar, building an image, plane by plane. In contrast, in the hands of Max Ernst, collage summons a “theater of the irrational.”*
Collage is a truly democratic medium and accessible to us all. No longer is paper scarce as it was in the genesis of this art form. Contemporary use of the medium has never gotten old. Today collage fractures forms, deconstructs subject matter, create harmony from divisive image collisions, appropriates and make amalgams of pop culture. Collage is a medium with an ever growing vocabulary.
RE-STUCK is an exhibition that focuses on contemporary collage, featuring practitioners from near and far, collagists who identify also as painters, sculptors and conceptual/performance artists.
We are happy to showcase Professors Emeritus Jim Richard (New Orleans) and Christopher Saucedo (New Orleans/New York), alongside artists Brian Guidry (Lafayette), Michael Pajon (New Orleans), and Dave Beach (Plymouth, UK).
*Digby, J., & Digby, J. (1987). The Collage Handbook. London: Thames & Hudson.