Reality of war and choices we face
By Barbara Levine
October 17, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Art Exhibition
War Is So Out
Fri–Sat, Oct 24–25, 6–9pm
Studio D
Colegio Militar 14A
Colonia Guadalupe

“War Is So Out” is a new interdisciplinary exhibition for two nights only at Studio D. This special event features installation, drawings, photographs and performance focused on war by artists Daniel Cameron, Karen Karabasz, Barbara Levine and Kirsten Dehner.

According to artist and Studio D owner Daniel Cameron, “For the last six years, I have wrestled with anger, powerlessness, frustration and dismay at a war in Iraq that does not make sense to me. Recently, it became clear it was time to organize an exhibition about war here in San Miguel.” The purpose, says Cameron, is not to sell art or solicit contributions, but to encourage residents and visitors to reflect on the undeniable reality of war and the choices we face in the upcoming election.

Cameron showed his collage series titled War Is So Out to fellow artists Karabasz, Levine and Dehner. The collages are magazine advertising pages altered with cut-outs of images of war and death and painted with bright red text. The collages are graphic and confrontational and galvanized the artists to embark on a group exhibition about the personal and political dimensions of war. 

The exhibition confronts cultural plundering and destruction, the staggering loss of human life, memory and the questions that beg to be answered about the future.

Cameron created a compelling installation entitled Futile Numbers for this exhibition. A mountain of blood orange boxes, with crudely painted slash marks to invoke the accumulating body count, teeters on a bed of sand making the viewer physically aware of the war’s death toll.

Karabasz explores the similarities between disparate cultures by focusing on cultural icons. Her Words of War drawings are an intricate mix of text and precise renderings of ancient Assyrian winged figures and dying lions. According to Karabasz, “In Iraq the historic winged figure symbolizes the soul, a higher power, and is an image of protection.

I think about all the cultural relics such as stone carvings of the sacred winged figure being lost—precious and irreplaceable artifacts from the cradle of civilization and they are being blown to bits or rolled over by Hummers. The drawings are my way of acknowledging and preserving the sacred imagery.”

Levine’s installation Evidence brings together anonymous snapshots from World War II, photographic manipulations featuring the obituaries of dead soldiers and official military photographs to create a kind of time capsule about the fragile surrogate memories families are left with in place of loved ones who died or vanished because of a war.

Dehner’s interactive performance Willingness to Know lets visitors explore questions about choices we have as bystanders to ignore or to be aware an ongoing war. She says, “In some ways we are all accountable, revealed by the extent that we actively pursue knowledge of the war. It’s not just about sanctions and elections; it’s about real human beings.”

Art Opening
“Visual Journey”

Eddie Soloway
Sat, Oct 25, 7–9pm
Yam Gallery
Instituto Allende, Int 1
Ancha de San Antonio 20 

In “Visual Journey,” Eddie Soloway presents a large selection of his work prepared for the publication of the book One Thousand Moons. The exhibition includes color and black and white photography and photogravure. The artist uses these techniques to explore the formal possibilities of the landscape. Abstract compositions in colors, reflections that melt the different elements of nature and a direct take of ancestral scenes are manipulated in manual interventions at his studio.

This second show by Soloway in Yam Gallery is part of the general program of Santa Fe Workshops, an annual photography event in San Miguel during October and November.

Soloway has been a resident instructor with Santa Fe Workshops for many years. The exhibit opening and the presentation and signing of One Thousand Moons mark the third year of collaboration between Yam Gallery and Santa Fe Workshops. The show is open through November.