May 14- June 5, 2016
Opening reception Saturday May 14th, 6-10pm
Gallery Talks opening night at 6pm & Sunday May 15th at 1pm
Rooms 1 & 2:
Cristina Molina
The Matriarchs
In my latest work, The Matriarchs I collaborate with all the women in my family to produce a series of still-life photographs, portraits, and cinematic imagery. References to mythical protagonists such as saints, deities, and other famous icons are interjected throughout. The images emphasize physical gestures of connectivity, hierarchy, balance, and tension--all allusions to the relational dynamics that exist between women in family units. Set in the subtropics, the work conflates female identity amidst a disappearing South Floridian territory. Ultimately this series is about contemplating loss while maintaining that the feminine presence is tender, generative, and powerful.
Cristina Molina was born and raised in Miami, FL and is a recent transplant to New Orleans where she is an artist member of The Front, and Assistant Professor of New Media and Animation at Southeastern Louisiana University. Molina's work investigates interpersonal experience as it relates to the sensorial and psychological. Cristina Molina's work has been exhibited regionally and abroad including: Proyecto 'Ace in Buenos Aires Argentina, Makii Masaru Gallery in Tokyo, North Miami MOCA, Frost Museum of Art in Miami, Harn Museum of art in Gainesville, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans. Molina is a recent recipient of the National Association for Latino Arts and Culture project grant.
http://cristinamolina.com/
http://nolafront.org/
Room 3:
Richard Legendre
Witness (curated by Cynthia Scott)
My training in painting was largely experimental. In art school I absorbed more information in regards to art theory than technique. I was preparing myself to being a working artist in a world where the still image is waxing and waning in precarious obsolescence. I have always thought of painting and looking at paintings as an act of contemplation, and when it finally came to practicing art in the real world, I found that I knew very little about traditional processes that would help me properly define my ideas. I began to teach myself about layering and composition, using photographs as source material. I wasn’t interested in creating exact copies of the images I chose, but rather in layering very thin paint over a surface in order to create a feeling of dimensionality. The fact that some of the images I used were of poor pixel resolution made it an interesting exercise in seeing how much information I could retain just through the method of layering color. I chose to paint images of crimes in progress because these stories need to be told, because they need to be contemplated, and because, as tragic as it can be, crime has a purpose.
Richard Legendre was born in 1984 and grew up in River Ridge, LA. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in Painting from Memphis College of Art in December 2007 and returned to New Orleans in 2008. He currently lives and works in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans.
Room 4:
Cynthia Scott
Return of the Thin White Duke
Be not fooled by the playful aspect of these works. Funky colors, humble materials and methods target your child’s-eye sense of fun before creeping into darker places. This series is both an homage to the recently deceased David Bowie and a shameless subversion of his sex-drugs-rock’nroll lyrics to my own fiendish ends: ruminations on racism, incarceration, surveillance, ecology, and false advertising. Let’s dance.
After receiving her BFA in sculpture from RISD, Cynthia Scott joined a black theater/dance company in New York (she’s not black); released two solo vocal recordings on Compact and Virgin 10 Records in London (she’s not British); and appeared as Corporal Dietrich in James Cameron’s Aliens (she’s definitely not a movie star). Now an artist and NPR announcer in New Orleans, she received her MFA from Tulane University in 2008. Her installation and mixed media work focuses on social inequity, political hyperbole and man’s interference with the environment.
cynthiascott2000.com