TOTAL ECLIPSE, March
10th thru April 1, 2001
2nd Floor main Gallery
An exhibition of paintings by Naoki Iwakawa,
Rodney Dickson, Debbie Davies, and Gail Mitchell
This is a group of "Tactile" artists who have
related techniques such as tossing paint, pigment, dirt
& ash, glass, string & wire, cutting through the
canvas, etc. The large canvases evoke the primitive power
of the archeological artifact, the meaning of which has
to be deciphered.
Naoki
Iwakawa is famous in Williamsburg Brooklyn for operating
the CAVE Gallery. He creates "happenings" in which
he produces action paintings on the spot to live music,
lashing canvas to tree branches, tossing paint, cutting,
sometimes using fire and wax. It is an underground art scene
which is rarely seen in Manhattan any more, which has opted
for a sterile and indifferent type of art and presentation.
Rodney
Dickson has just returned from three months in Hanoi,
Vietnam where he produced a new set of paintings. This body
of work is an investigation into Vietnamese culture, and focuses
on the stiring sense of spirituality in ancestor worship.
He collaborated with Vietnamese writers, artists, actors,
musicians, and composers in making the work. On his huge canvases
he leaves the surfaces blackened as if seared, scorched tar,
distressed, hacked at, savaged & ravaged, streaked over
the red of roses and of blood.
