Giving up the Ghost
January 7, 2016
Owl’s Head Wine Bar, 479-74th Street, Brooklyn
Participating artists: Audrey Anastasi, Fiona Buchanan, Danielle Bullock, Jean Calderone, Maria Calderone, Maya Ines Carino, Gina Colazzo, Carl Contrera, Alicia Degener, Cecilia Whittaker-Doe, Cheres Espinosa, Marie Laure Fino, Joanie Flickinger, Christopher Froelich, Michele Nordi Hern, Grant Huang, Ellen Coleman-Izzo, Heidi Lanino, Christopher Moss, Mitch Patrick, Catherine Petrosino, Elissa Swanger, Jacqueline Wadsworth, Peter Wadsworth
A search for what the world ought to be, the life principle or vital spark, the seat of intelligence, which gives way to our mind’s apparitions and haunts are how we may define the soul.
The life principle or vital spark, the seat of intelligence, which gives way to our mind’s apparitions and haunts are how we may define the soul. The soul of an artist is often restless and searching and the exploration is a never-ending journey to mine more questions and shun definitive answers for fear it will lead to creation’s death.
We find those questions through our perceptions of our physical and subconscious worlds that partner to embody the spirits that inform us. We mingle with these “ghosts” as we navigate life’s terrain and we share them through the art we bring into being.
This exhibit plays with “ghosts” in a variety of forms.
Revival: Ghosts who may lure us back to old haunts and persuade us into creating new ones. Mischievous spirits, like those of Owl’s Head who had a hand in crafting a place where drunk history and poetry is spoken and ghosts from the past reorganize into the dreams that define us today, a place where good souls toast with fine spirits.
Invocation: The portals in our studios that transport us to a world of different possibilities. Where our faults whisper to us and employ us as conduits towards the cultivation of new concepts, our friendly ghosts.
Phantom: an insistent fear that weaves through our personal or collective consciousness
Ghosts in the Machines: a place where our memories and private search efforts are “cookied” and sold to the highest bidder. Documenting the ghosts of our past and present, forever floating in a digital miasmic limbo, waiting to be plucked back into existence by the malevolent, predatory, curious or protective living who are searching for our marks, proof of a transgression or our private moments- an aid to understanding who we are in order to manipulate or expose our being.
Visions: memories of past acts or people who inhabit our thoughts
Apparitions: visible but not present, the history of place and the ghosts who leave us with our present
The ghosts of knowledge and the ghosts of emptiness continue their otherworldly battle using humans as their hosts. We acquiesce in our search for what the world ought to be by offering our souls not only to truth and beauty, but also to their pursuit.
PRESS
A new year, and a new Bay Ridge Nights, By Dennis Lynch / January 1, 2016