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| OPENINGS |
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Opening Reception : Friday, November 4 from 6pm to 8pm
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Nocturnal angels take flight with heavenly messages from the divine. The constant expansion of time and space, challenges the western thought that time itself is a linear progression. Iona Rozeal Brown moves objects, materials, and ideologies from discourses of history that reference the underground culture of eighties New York to Neo-Classicism. Brown has created her own ode to graffiti, incorporating illuminated manuscript inspired texts as well as abstracted figurative forms on wood panels and paper. Using acrylic polymer, pencil, ink and ‘painter-makers”, browns imagery are reflections of the musical notes of Dubstep, an electronic music with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals. Her paintings as well as her upcoming performance commissioned by Performa, are immersed with pictorial cultural references of Islamic calligraphy, consumption societies of the west, as well as theatrical elements found within west African ghost stories, Japanese Noh, and Kabuki theater, all converging together with the lines and precision of “vogueing” and nuances of hip-hop. brown pushes the boundaries of identities and questions the very idea of culture belonging to any one ethnic or geographical group.
open.ed explores the very nature of cultural expansions of ideas and discources. brown experiments with different contextual and conceptual manifestations, while in the process, bringing textured surfaces to the stage. brown’s recent works explore the cognitive process of internalizing the external. open.ed, extends brown’s visual discourse and challenges the very notion of the production of art. Exhibiting the fluidity of a mixologist, brown’s newest works reinforce her ability to pull from facets of visual, social, political and cultural narratives to construct the very tapestry that references the 80’s New York to the youth of the “lost generation” and their constant appropriation and consumption within society. These allegories are in also woven into her upcoming performance 17 & 18 November at Performa 11 titled “the battle of yestermore”. – K. Anthony Jones
About Iona Rozeal Brown
Iona Rozeal Brown lives and works in Washington, DC and New York. She received an MFA from Yale University School of Art (2002) and a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute. brown was the subject of a 2010 solo exhibition at Cleveland’s Museum of Contemporary Art, which featured work from the series you can’t turn a hustler into a husband (or lessons on how to get something for nothing). Her work can be found in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Milwaukee Art Museum, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, The Rubell Family Collection/Contemporary Art Foundation, The Studio Museum of Harlem, and numerous other public and private collections.
G Fine Art is located at 1350 Florida Avenue NE. Contact the gallery at [email protected] by phone at 202.462.1601 or visit them online at www.gfineartdc.com
Gallery Hours are Wednesday through Saturday Noon – 6pm
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