ARCHIVE : SOLO EXHIBITION, ALLOUCHE GALLERY NYC: 18 GUERNICAS
SEPTEMBER 22ND AT ALLOUCHE GALLERY NYC
Ron’s highly anticipated Guernica show opens this month at Allouche Gallery in New York City.
This body of work has taken over two years to complete and features 18 new interpretations of Picasso’s iconic Guernica.
“Guernica for me is a modern template, just as the Madonna and Child is an ancient template. There are many templates in art, shells upon which the artist forges a vision, contributing to a shared cultural experience.”
There is always a bull, a horse, a mother and child. A figure lurches forward, a building burns. The lightbulb eye of the sun shines on. How perfectly the forms describe universal gestures and juxtapositions, from hope to horror, from oppression to appropriation. From the Guernica template comes a new vocabulary to describe the dynamics of endless cycles of creation and destruction.
This exhibition marks the 100th Guernica painting Ron English has done. The artist has examined the template obsessively, through sculpture and set, imagining truth in experience from every angle, naming the damager and the dead .
Iconic Ron English characters comingle with Picasso and Saturday morning cartoons. Temper Tot, the American id, becomes the bomber, the original agent of change.
“Cultural bias is embedded in our narrative. My Guernicas call attention to the product placement of global corporate culture, using war as entertainment and entertainment as war.”
