VESTIGES/BOOKWORKS
1990, New Orleans, LA; Potsdam, NY; Ithaca, NY; Tulsa, OK;
"VESTIGES/BOOKWORKS", curated by Jan Gilbert, was a traveling exhibition that gathered the work of writers and artists who reinterpreted the book form while examining the interconnection of image and text. The visual and verbal were added to one another. In no case was simple illustration the motive. The norm of linear narrative was subverted, and questions of time, space, sequence, narrative and memory were raised. Recontextualizations were drawn. The goal of the art was to dismantle and reshuffle normal distinctions regarding past/present, here/there and ultimately specific/universal. In the non-linear time and space of many works, images and ideas were expressed simultaneously, from every direction. Yet the images and ideas also generated networks of associations, which suggested that all things were intimately related, and at the deepest level may have been part of the same thing.
The measure of the show's success was that it could change the way viewers experienced reality. Viewers could come away sceptical of conventions associated with communication, and be receptive to new, multi-dimensional modes of thinking and feeling.
Participants : Betty Alessandra, Charlie Bishop, Gerald Cannon, Gillian Conoley, Andrei Codrescu, Alan Gerson, Jan Gilbert, Danella Hero, Debra Howell, William Kitchens, Yusef Komunyakaa, Carolyn Maisel, Catalina Mateescu Bogdan, Page Moran, Darlene Hingle, David Rive', Christine Sauer, Kristen Struebing-Beazley, Jean Tardy, Jan Thompson, Nancy Wyllie
Funded By : Roland Gibson Gallery, College of Arts and Sciences at Potsdam College of the State University of New York, Potsdam, NY
conversations salvagedmemories contemporarymemorials bookworks thesubjectiswar
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