"New portraiture, complex realism, updates on the artist gaze, a 'Renaissance' approach to multimedia, poetics and problems with objectification, and many happy Hellenistic returns are all sought in exploration of the Neo-Renaissance, as are works relating to laying nude the human person literally and metaphorically, moral ambiguities in arcadian revels, troubles in paradise both celebratory an enraged. The archaic torso of Apollo, in other words, run through the sieve of Italian dissidents, and tempered by the reality of Manet’s bohemian consciousness and syphilitic demise..."on SPRING/BREAK Art Show's 2022 theme, "Naked Lunch."
Marrying the Modernism of Edward Manet to the fantastic of Louis Carroll in an absurd landscape, and Georges Bataille’s argument on what is Sacred and what is Profane, The Contemporary Art Modern strives to present a different view on a Naked Lunch. Pulling in nodes of the absurd, the otherworldly and sensuousness we will explore the interconnectedness and reactions to and against of not only the schools of Modernism and fantasy but also our dependence on the environment arguing that our ‘heathens’ in their pure creativeness stand firm against the rigid morality of what society decrees as sacred - revealing that the playful ‘heathen’ embodies a purity of self and acceptance. Picking different historical and cultural points the exhibition will also highlight times and behaviors that have failed to maintain and reach a sense of worldly innocence and acceptance of the Other. Including works from James Akers, Khotan Fernandez, Molly Gambardella, Demis Martinelli, Aurora Molina, Stefano Ogliari Badessi, Julie Peppito, Evelyn Politzer, Debbie Smith, Sweetieboosh, Margaret Ann Withers, and Guang-Yu Zhang, our room at SPRING/BREAK will become an evergreen capsule of interpretations of both Manet and Carroll with additions of the contemporary absurd, dreams, and this modern moment to stimulate and invite dialog.
All tied together, The Contemporary Art Modern Project’s Naked Lunch becomes a inactive skit forcing the viewer to look down, crouch down and in effect enter into the “looking glass” and witness, comment and experience the fantastic, which, today, stands less fantastic as we enter into a world of social failures, and environmental disregard.
Curation and statement by Melanie Prapopoulos
