David Clarkson
Landscape Sculpture
The Eagle Never Hunts The Fly
Jon Boles
Elizabeth Deull
Lionel Maunz
June 28 – July 28, 2007
Opening reception: Thursday, June 28, 6-9 pm
Cynthia Broan Gallery
546 W 29th St
New York NY 10001
Hours: 10-6
::: Cynthia Broan Gallery is pleased to announce Landscape Sculpture, a solo exhibition by David Clarkson of objects and drawings depicting Mars, and The Eagle Never Hunts The Fly, a group show with Jon Boles, Elizabeth Deull and Lionel Maunz. Both exhibitions formally address various fantastical spaces and offer a pictoral investigation of unique cosmological landscapes.
::: In Landscape Sculpture, David Clarkson exhibits objects and drawings that combine new NASA images of Mars with 19th century “picturesque” landscape elements, blending visions of a science fiction future and the Old West. The works’ subject, the inhabitation of a hostile alien environment, encourages us to consider how we use art and illusion, as much as science and technology, to control the forces of nature. Also on exhibit is Clarkson’s video, Colony, in which surrogate (insect) astronauts explore the terrain of a NASA Mars photograph accompanied by an electronic score he composed from sci-fi sound effects. Its “opening credits” provide an extensive chronology of Mars in the collective imagination of the cinema.
::: David Clarkson is interested in the way that “Mars must be experienced only as an image or technological vision, whether it’s mine or NASA’s.” Simultaneously presenting a believable natural image along side its material artifice, his work appears to convey the detailed (often subterranean) surface of a distant world, even as it also reveals a more personal one. His art exists, as Marshall McLuhan said of all technology, “to extend our senses.”
::: The Eagle Never Hunts the Fly features three artists investigating fantastical surrealist worlds of their own
construction and exploring the diverse terrain and psychological states of these unique inner-worlds. Jon Boles’
conglomerated medley bares evidence of the southern schizo existence. The predominately figurative works are based on daydreams and nightmares of the imagination. This work examines a mixture of themes including parenting, incest, abortion, and hip-hop. Elizabeth Deull depicts a mystical storybook landscape where children of a new agey spiritual movement are the prophets, communicating with god, nature and the beyond. These paintings depict characters burdened by their incredible lightness of being, translated through a candy coated psychedelic palette and watery brushwork. Her work draws from images of astronomy, astrology, fairy tale, and psychic new age mythology. Lionel Maunz’s paintings unravel an intricate universe of his own constructed mythology, revolving around the failure of organization, the escape of order and an evolving organization of principles represented by a group of historical characters, such as Peshu Alga, “the first rebel against the Most High God, who lured Archangel Lucifer” and many others. These elusive and detailed worlds are depicted through lushly rendered anamorphic landscapes and fields of biological shapes.
::: David Clarkson graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1980, and in 1985, he was a Canadian representative at the 18th Sao Paulo Biennial. Since 1992 he has lived in New York, where he has shown at P.S. 1, White Columns, Ronald Feldman Gallery and Derek Eller Gallery. His video was shot at the U Cross Foundation in Wyoming during a
residency there and features music by the legendary 1970s Canadian punk band, The Diodes.
