American Dreamers: Reality and Imagination Contemporary Art (English and Italian Edition) - Softcover

Bartholomew F. Bland; Franziska Nori; Robert Borosage; John Kenneth White; Katerina Vanden Heuvel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 8836622453 ISBN 13: 9788836622450

Publisher: Silvana Editoriale, 2012

Synopsis

American Dreamers. Reality and Imagination in Contemporary American Art, an exhibition organised in conjunction with the Hudson River Museum (Yonkers, New York) opens at the Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina (Palazzo Strozzi, Florence) on 9 March 2012. It comprises a reflection on the work of artists who use their fantasy, their imagination and their dreams to build alternative worlds to the increasingly complex and difficult reality of life today.

Does the American dream still exist? Since 11 September 2011 the United States of America has witnessed the collapse of its sense of invulnerability and security, but at the same time a spirit of optimism, the ability to imagine and to dream, the will to carry on believing in a future with a happy ending through work and through the triumph of the values of freedom and of equality of opportunity, have maintained their central place in the very idea of "being American" and of the American dream. The latter promises success and happiness constantly fuelled by the fantasy of Hollywood and by the aesthetics adopted in the advertising campaigns of such leading multinational brands as Coca Cola or Walt Disney.

Fleeing reality is a way of fighting against the complex difficulties of life today: a psychological break with reality or the creation of a better alternative become strategies for escaping from such concrete and very real threats as rising unemployment, the negative international financial situation, or forecasts of impending environmental doom.

The eleven American artists involved in the exhibition (Laura Ball, Adrien Broom, Nick Cave, Will Cotton, Adam Cvijanovic, Richard Deon, Thomas Doyle, Mandy Greer, Kirsten Hassenfeld, Patrick Jacobs and Christy Rupp) resort to their imagination to produce a personal revisitation of reality or at times even a flight from that reality, through the construction of parallel, alternative worlds which explicitly turn their backs on "true" reality. Some of the works condense the essence of reality into miniaturised systems while others expand outwards into space, creating worlds in which the spectator can immerse themselves in parallel realities, and yet others feed on fantastic, dreamlike images or reflect on such symbolic themes as the home and the family which continue even today to play a central role in the construction of the myth of the American way of life.

For some artists the construction of fantasy worlds represents their own personal critique of contemporary society; for others it enables them to create alternative solutions in which to rediscover meanings and values that appear to have been lost in today's world. Some of the artists also seem to share an interest in manual skills echoing the principles of outmoded manufacturing methods or alternative ways of organising life, espousing a deliberately unconventional attitude in an effort to combat the principles of serial production and the excessive speed that contemporary society demands.

American Dreamers is organised by the Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina in conjunction with the Hudson River Museum (Yonkers, New York) and curated by Bartholomew Bland.

About this title

About the Author

Bartholomew Bland is Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Hudson River Museum, where his survey exhibitions and their accompanying catalogues for the museum include Paintbox Leaves: Autumnal Inspiration from Cole to Wyeth and the upcoming Industrial Sublime: Transforming New York s Rivers, 1900-1940. Mr. Bland s current exhibitions include Winfred Rembert: Amazing Grace, which is touring nationally.

Other projects include the traveling exhibition A Field Guide to Sprawl, which appeared at Yale University. Among his exhibitions dedicated to single artists are Andrew Stevovich: The Truth About Lola; Susan Wides: From Mannahatta to Kaaterskill ; Whitfield Lovell: All Things in Time; and Red Grooms: In the Studio. He has written numerous essays articles and is co-author of the book Merry Wives and Others: A History of Domestic Humor Writing. He was a contributor to the books Dutch New York: The Roots of Hudson Valley Culture and Westchester: The American Suburb, both published by Fordham University Press, and was co-curator of the companion exhibitions. In his former positions, he organized a wide range of interpretive projects for the Staten Island Museum at Snug Harbor Cultural Center and the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach.

Review

Excepted from: An Exposition in Florence Focuses on American Artists in the City By Roderick Conway Morris, May 17, 2012, New York Times

The Center for Contemporary Culture Strozzina, in the vaulted cellars of the Palazzo, surveys some of the latest works of 11 American artists in American Dreamers: Reality and Imagination in Contemporary American Art, curated by Bartholomew Bland.

Adrien Broom is unusual in her biographical notes in recording time spent studying in Europe, in Florence and London in 2006. Her large photographs of female figures in billowing drapery floating ethereally in air and water in states of dream-like weightlessness bring to mind references as diverse as Ophelia by the Pre-Raphaelite John Everett Millais, Baroque sculpture and the fin-de-siècle Symbolists.

But she is not the only artist here to find inspiration in European art of the past. Will Cotton s hyperrealist paintings draw on the rococo extravagances of Boucher, Fragonard and Tiepolo and the 20th-century pin-up artist Alberto Varga. Cotton s luscious semi-nude starlets floating on clouds of pink and white cotton candy, are simultaneously parodies of commercialism and enticing invitations to buy the product (the artist s Cotton Candy Katy here provided the image for the singer Katy Perry s Teenage Dream album).

Nick Cave s Soundsuits, costumes made from old fabrics, crotched mats, knitted blankets, buttons, tin toys and other discarded materials, that create diverse noises as the wearer moves about in them, revisit the outlandish stage costumes of the Italian Futurists and Picasso s designs for Parade, staged by Diaghilev s Ballets Russes.

Laborious hand-crafting and recycling of materials play a central role in the works of other artists here. Kirsten Hassenfeld makes complex hanging geometrical sculptures out of drinking straws and old gift-wrapping paper. Mandy Greer constructs fantastical forests from festoons of soft fabrics, encrusted with beads and buttons. Christy Rupp s Extinct Birds Previously Consumed by Humans are skeletons of dodos, Great Auks and moas composed of thousands of chicken and Turkey bones gathered from friends and fast-food joints.

Both Thomas Doyle and Patrick Jacops use meticulous modeling skills to conjure up engrossing worlds in miniature. Doyle s world features traditional American clapboard houses imprisoned in glass spheres and domes, with weird apocalyptic things happening to them. And Jacobs s tiny dioramas offer viewers visions of minute parallel universes of mushroom clusters, a fairy grass ring and a Lilliputian urban apartment with views not of city streets but of an ideal, tranquil landscape of tall trees and a winding river.

American Dreamers: Reality and Imagination in Contemporary American Art. Center for Contemporary Culture Strozzina. --New York Times

Excerpted from Americans Invigorate Florence, May 16, 2012 Wall Street Journal by Judy Fayard

The Strozzina Contemporary Culture Center offers a parallel exhibition called "American Dreamers: Reality and Imagination in Contemporary American Art," with fascinating visions of fantasy worlds conjured up by 11 American artists working hands-on, crafting their materials paint, canvas, paper, found objects, fabric, bones in a countercurrent to conceptual pretensions. Will Cotton's precisely painted nude beauties float in cotton-candy clouds, like Baroque ceilings of yore. In Thomas Doyle's Magritte-like miniature landscapes under glass domes, tiny clapboard houses teeter on the brink of sinkholes or perch precariously on cliffs. And performance artist Nick Cave's wonderfully giddy "Soundsuit" costumes resemble creatures from "Star Wars." --Wall Street Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: Silvana Editoriale
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 8836622453
• ISBN 13: 9788836622450
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160