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GUESTROOM GALLERY TO HOST JIM RISWOLD’S
CURATORIAL DEBUT “WAR”
Portland, OR… A professional artist for six years, Jim Riswold strives to create dialogue among gallery goers with his satirical photographs of the most notorious despots of the 20th century. He has cultivated a following as a successful and prolific fine artist and it seems a natural shift for him to try on the hat of curator next. On January 18th, 2008, Jim Riswold will present his curatorial debut titled “War” running through February 29th at Guestroom Gallery.
With six solo shows under his belt in under three years, there’s no question that Riswold is driven; when you talk to him, you can almost see his wheels churning out new ideas with multiple layers of projects all at once. What is constant in Jim Riswold’s creative formula is an interesting juxtaposition. His main motivation in creating this show was to pair up Soviet war photographer, Dmitri Baltermants’ work of actual war scenes with his own child-like and humorous scenes surrounding toy figurines of dictators. Riswold shows his mastermind use of dichotomy by choosing the gritty black and white photo of soldiers pushing heavy artillery through an icy river to hang next to a glossy color photo of a soldier pushing Stalin in a baby stroller.
The eclectic cast Riswold has assembled in War includes Susan Seubert, Eva Lake, Michael Spafford, David Levinthal, John Wesley, and William Anthony.
Jim’s artist’s statement is as follows:
Bad guys start a lot of wars.
Bad guys don’t mind being called bad guys, but they sure don’t like being called fools.
So, by all means show Hitler with his pants around his ankles; put a clown nose on Mussolini; put a Kick Moi sign on Napoleon’s back; give Mao some onion gum; put a whoopee cushion under Stalin. Descended pants, clown snouts, kick me signs, joke gum and whoopee cushions don’t mix well with the overbearing pride that is hubris.
Toys do the trick as well. The dictator enjoys his monuments, his pageantry and his spectacle; that’s why he’s a dictator. (Healthy doses of hubris, charisma, paranoia, ruthlessness, vanity and immorality also come in handy.) The oversized monument, choreographed pageantry and grand spectacle inflate the importance of the dictator. On the other hand, a toy—defined as an object, often a small representation of something familiar, as an animal, object, person, etc. for children to play with—deflates its subject with its very smallness. Instead of providing—as monuments, pageantry and spectacle do—grand expositions mythologizing the dictator, toys, by definition, make their subjects seem small, childish and trifling.
If bad guys don’t like being called fools, it stands to reason they would not care too much to bee seen as small, childish and trifling. Now, I’m not saying all we have to do to deal effectively with the lunatic evil that is, say, Kim Jong Il is sneak Louis Black into North Korea with a Kim Jong Il bit and a megaphone, but it wouldn’t hurt; unless, of course, you are Louis Black and you get captured and thrown in a dank prison and tortured.
Jim Riswold’s artwork appears courtesy of Augen Gallery.
Susan Seubert appears courtesy of Froelick Gallery’ and will show Iraqi Teeth, a photo of extracted from Iraqi prisoners of war by U.S. Army medics during the first Gulf War. The teeth weren’t removed under coercion: they were removed at the request of the Iraqi soldiers because their own health care was insufficient and they were in pain. Upon seeing the teeth, Seubert was taken aback by her assumptions drawn from information stemming from mainstream news media. She says, ”The teeth enable one to think of the families of casualties on both sides, many of who must have to go through the grueling process of Identifying body parts or providing dental records to the authorities.“
Portland’s Eva Lake will be exhibiting 2 photomontages, appearing courtesy of Augen Gallery. Michael Spafford of Seattle has been painting for more than 40 years and will be supplying wood block prints from his Iliad series. Influenced by Greek and Roman mythology, Spafford, in his own words, uses themes of “dualism, metamorphosis, the confrontation of opposites, the struggle for achievement, and the ultimate failure of an heroic effort” in his war prints. His work appears courtesy of Francine Seders Gallery.
Four Dmitri Baltermants pieces will be on display: Grief, Crossing
the Oder River, Road to War, and Tchaikovsky. Born in Warsaw, Poland, Baltermants’ father, an officer in the Russian Imperial Army, died in the early days of the First World War. With his mother, he moved to Moscow and grew up during the hectic, perilous days of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Civil War.
His work will be available through Jennifer Stoots in Portland.
Artwork that will not be for sale from Riswold’s personal collection include photographs by David Levinthal, who is credited with providing Riswold the inspiration for his toy work. Living in NY, photographer David Levinthal has long fixated on toys as signifiers of cultural myths, employing toy soldiers, cowboys and Indians to deconstruct historic icons through the prism of 1950s boyhood.
Also from Riswolds’ private collection will be a color screen print by pop artist John Wesley and paintings by William Anthony.
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OPENING RECEPTION
FRIDAY
JAN, 18 2008
6 TO 9 PM
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