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May Issue 2003
Artspace in Raleigh, NC, Features Works by David Solow
Artspace
in Raleigh, NC, will present the exhibition, lost intentions/ovary
and oculus, featuring an installation by artist David Solow
in Gallery 1, from May 2 through June 28, 2003.
The photograph is by nature motionless, even immovable, unchanging. Photography stills the image. It fixes it. It silences it. And it does that, in part, by situating the viewer in relation to the subject of the photograph. The photograph speaks of lost time, of the unrecoverable. Like death, it is still and silent.
The photographs in lost intentions/ovary and oculus are specifically about decay, which both connects to death and differentiates itself from death. Decay is a process - a process so slow that there is a stillness about it - a false stillness. For like an Eadweard Muybridge series, each photograph that could be taken over time is different. Loss is mutable.
Within this fluid and moving body of work, there is something that resists placement, something that thwarts recognition, something that defies being pinned down. These photographic lightboxes are about the obliteration of the habitual, which Solow notes has the same Latin root as habitation, relating to the food and shelter theme of the images. More than just food and shelter, the images specifically reference cultivation and architecture, outgrowths of civilization. Solow asks "what is civilization but the cementing of placement and location? We stop moving, so we must cultivate the land to sustain us. We must build buildings to keep us safe. That is what these photographs portray and resist."
Solow first came to North Carolina twenty-four years ago to attend Duke University. He then went on to study ballet at the North Carolina School of the Arts. After working for a few years as a farm worker and carpenter, Solow attended UNC-Chapel Hill, from where he graduated in 1990 with highest honors in painting and sculpture and honors in poetry. He has been the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships; most recently, a North Carolina Artist Fellowship and the prestigious Kohler Artist Residency. He has shown extensively for the past thirteen years. Recent shows include Some Kind of Dream at the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh and Homegrown at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC. Solow will be included in two other shows this year: Natural World at Kimberly Venardos & Company, New York and Defying Gravity: Contemporary Art and Flight at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh.
The catalogue for lost intentions/ovary and oculus marks the second monograph of Solow's work. The first, ex-voto/plumbum/history attached to my heels, is available through Solow's website, (www.davidsolow.com).
Solow is represented by Kimberly Venardos & Company, New York.
Solow, along with Dominique Nahas will be giving a brief gallery talk on May 2 at 8pm. Dominique Nahas is an independent curator and critic based in New York and is an editor of d'Art International, a leading arts quarterly. Nahas wrote the essay for the lost intentions/ovary and oculus catalogue, available at Artspace for $10.
This exhibition and catalogue is sponsored by the Haskell Corporation.
Artspace is a non-profit visual art center dedicated to presenting quality exhibitions and education programs in an open-studio environment. Guided tours of exhibitions and artist studios are available for groups of 10 or more. Artspace is located in Historic City Market in Raleigh, NC, at the corner of Blount St. at Davie St. Artspace is fully handicap accessible to persons with disabilities. Needs will be accommodated upon request. Artspace is supported by the North Carolina Arts Council, an agency funded by the State of North Carolina and the National Endowment for the Arts; by the United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County, with funds from the United Arts campaign and the Grassroots Arts Program of the North Carolina Arts Council; by the City of Raleigh based on recommendations of the Raleigh Arts Commission; and by individuals; businesses; corporations; and private foundations.
For further information
check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Center at
919/821-2787, or e-mail at (artspace@bellsouth.net).
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