Next at Civilian Art Projects:
“13 Days + 13 Nights, 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis”
Friday, October 26th, 2012, 7-9pm
October 26 – December 1, 2012
13 Days + 13 Nights, 1962:
The Cuban Missile Crisis
“13 Days + 13 Nights, 1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis,” an exhibition by long-time D.C.-based painter Judy Jashinsky, is a fascinating personal voyage into a time of epic world turmoil. A noted painter of history, over the past several years Jashinsky has created more than forty works on paper, canvas and wood of landscapes, portraits, and personalities key to her memory of the time. She has also collaborated with artists in Chicago and Washington to create a sound installation and a signature video symbolizing the cultural climate in the U.S. during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In high school at the time, in rural Wisconsin, Jashinsky can never forget the impact of the event and has spent years studying the Crisis. Including images of President Kennedy and his advisors, portraits of the players, and a younger generation who watched their parents stockpile food and board up the windows preparing for nuclear war, Jashinsky proves no stranger to communicating carefully studied moments in history. A “history painting that analyzes the past for lessons to use in the present and the future” inspires Jashinsky’s unfolding of the Crisis through a rich, visual narration.
Artist Avi Gupta presents his first solo exhibition at Civilian Art Projects with “lonesum,” an ongoing series of photographs he began in 2006. Framing static moments with an eye that seeks parts to a whole, Gupta asserts “the sum of these parts reflect the weight of a residual cosmic loneliness found in everyday situations.”
Taking the universal quest, the constant search for meaning in life, as a vehicle Mr. Gupta captures the vulnerability present in the everyday. Drawn to anthropomorphized objects and situations that reflect the animate versus inanimate, toward fabrics that temporarily hold or retain the presence of people, to displaced or discarded items that denote value, Gupta constructs opportunities to discover meaning within the frame. To calculate the sum of parts equal to that of a moment caught in isolation.