Sunday, October 26, 2008

The MAC presents: Alex Rubio: Exodus / Alex de Leon: Divided We Stand / Sally Warren: Traces

By Pegasus News wire

The MAC announces its November - December Exhibition presenting the visual art of Alex Rubio, Alex De Leon and Sally Warren. The opening reception will be held on Saturday, November 1st, 2008. This exhibition will run through December 13, 2008.

In the Large Gallery: Alex Rubio, Exodus

Image provided by MAC

Alex Rubio, 4 Horseman

Exodus will show the apocalyptic imagery of Alex Rubio. The artist chose the aforementioned title for his exhibition because his work draws much of its imagery from Biblical references. Rubio also claims the influence of widely differing sources as Aztec religion and mythology, the prophecies of Nostradamus and even popular doomsday movies such as "The Day After Tomorrow" and "I Am Legend."

The MAC will exhibit Rubio's painting "The 4 Horsemen," in wich the artist takes the image of Pestilence, Famine, War and Death from the Biblical book of Revelation and gives it a contemporary spin. An image of natural healing accompanies each figure, such as fruit-bearing plants to cure famine or an olive branch to end war. Each figure is also surmounted by a bird-a dead sparrow above Pestilence brings to mind the avian flu epidemic, while the eagle above War has come to symbolize political power. Rubio's Exodus will be in exhibit for the first time in Dallas after closing last August at the Blue Star Contemporary Art Center in San Antonio.

About Alex Rubio

Rubio was born in 1968 and was raised on the west side of San Antonio, Texas, where his community became his inspiration and audience. As a young artist, Rubio was compelled to depict large-scale spray paint images on the walls of his unit at the Mirasol Housing Projects. As a result, he was recruited by directors of the Community Cultural Arts Organization as a youth arts crew leader for their mural program based at the Cassiano Homes Housing Projects. Thus began his training in large-scale drawing and painting, mural composition, community outreach, and youth arts education.

As a community-based artist, Rubio have spent over seventeen years engaging San Antonio community members in mural painting, an art form known for its accessibility and its contemporary relevance. In addition to mural works, the artists coordinated community-based programs such as Art Instructor for the Inmate Creative Arts Program at the Bexar County Detention Center, Art Instructor for the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Organization and most recently Mural Coordinator for the San Antonio Cultural Arts Organization. As a studio artist, Rubio continues to illustrate and describe past and present life in the west side of San Antonio. His cultural and personal experiences are documented in his works. He uses iconic images in an effort to preserve the cultural bond that connects and promotes inter-generational dialogue within and beyond our Chicano communities. Rubio works as Art Studio Manager for the Blue Star Contemporary Art Center

Alex Rubio has been a mural coordinator at San Antonio Cultural Arts and an art instructor at several schools and institutions around this city, including The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, and The Bexar County Detention Center. In 2007 he received the Art Pace Residency Grant from the Art Pace Foundation in San Antonio, Texas as well as the Artist Grant from The Joan Mitchell Foundation in New York. He has had two solo exhibitions at Blue Star Center for Contemporary Art in San Antonio, Texas. His work has been included at McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas, the South Texas Institute for the Arts at Corpus Christi, Texas, and the Smithsonian Museo Alameda Museum in San Antonio, to name a few. Rubio exhibited internationally in Puerto Rico in 1998, as part of a national touring show. His last solo exhibition "EXODUS" was in July 2008 at Blue Star Contemporary Art Center in San Antonio, Texas.

Artist Statement

The pre-apocalyptic images in the Exodus exhibition are an attempt to compare images of past religious, historical doctrines and superstitions with our contemporary fears of the end of days.

My focus has always been on community awareness through images of my Westside San Antonio barrio, my family, and my neighbors. This exhibit also focuses on community, but a universal one. In the past few years, many people around the world have been experiencing fears of the end of days, because of the current events both natural and political. What is interesting is that these fears have not changed from those fears of the past, however the imagery has. Contemporary man has combined the past with the present by modifying these images to represent better our own times. My hope with these pre-apocalyptic images in the Exodus exhibition is to make a comparison of historical religious philosophies and doctrines, superstitions and folklores of many cultures to our ever-changing contemporary age.

In the Square Gallery, Alex de Leon Divided We Stand

Image provided by The MAC

Alex de Leon, Divided We Stand installation

Divided We Stand is an installation pointing the isolation of social classes in America. Using his work as a social commentary, de Leon sees his surroundings exposed and affected in different ways yet experiencing the same changes and challenges of nature, economic and social dynamics. Using ephemeral materials such as cardboard to create human settlement representations, de Leon makes poignant distinctions easily recognizable to identify where we stand in his dwellings.

About Alex de Leon

Alex de Leon was born in Edinburg Texas in 1959 and raised in San Antonio. He graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1983. The artist received an artist-in-residency at the BEMIS Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska. In March, 1995, he completed the London Studio Program awarded by the PaceRoberts Foundation for Contemporary Arts in San Antonio. In 1996, he participated at the Artpace International Artists-in-Residence Program. In July 13, 2006, Artpace selected Rubio to participate in its "2 to Watch" collaborative program with Gemini Ink, pairing the works of the de Leon with those of writer Trey Moore.

De Leon bases his work as a counterbalance to the daily grind, creating art from personal experiences, making pointed social commentaries. The graphic quality of this work makes his art accessible to a broad and diverse audience. He now works in media other than the printed image. Most recently, he has concentrated his efforts in ceramics and painting. Even though the media have changed, he continues to make social commentaries through his work. His latest pieces combine sculpture and video. Homelessness and social class are at the heart of this latest work.

Artist Statement

"Welcome Homes" was the fruition of my interactions with homeless people in my town. It was a reflection of what I saw around me. This led me to keep looking around at how other people live. "Divided We Stand" are observations of other things I see around me. There are a few who live in a world of security and luxury. The myopic utopia filled with credit card comforts are the means to an end of a class educated by a world of advertising. Finally there are the families that become the butt of a joke or are taken as ignorant and inbreed because of the shadow our society has cast on them. When you're out in the world take a look around and think of where you fit in to this humanity we have all created.

In the New Works Space: Sally Warren, Traces

Image provided by The MAC

Sally Warren, Mountain 1

Traces is a series of pieces the artist produced this year. Warren's work evolved from high contrast colorful natural rock formation images to drawings bigger in scale yet still preserving the fragility, daintiness and serenity that defines her work. The artist is driven, attracted by the creative process, imposing upon herself numerous restrictions that result in minimal, conspicuous and puissant works that invite the viewer to peruse her pieces. Highly aesthetic, inspired by the great yet unattainable mountainous formations, Warren's work is affected by the beauty of nature's ancient rock formations, our most seemingly permanent national icons amid their chaotic human encroachment.

About Sally Warren

Sally Warren was born in San Antonio, Texas. She has a BA from University of Texas

at Austin, and holds an MFA from the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Warren received the Meadows School of the Arts Artistic Scholarship Award during 2001 and 2002 and did an artist's residency at Vermont Studio Center , Johnson, Vermont. Her first solo exhibition was in 2003

with Destroyers, Bomberjets, and Crowns at the Doolin Gallery in Southern Methodist University followed by another solo show in 2004 at the Kiva Gallery in Mountainview College. Group exhibitions include The Forum Gallery at Brookhaven College, Barry Whistler Gallery, The Pollock Gallery at Southern Methodist University, The MAC,

and Open Studios at the Shamrock Hotel Studios, all in Dallas, Texas.

Artist Statement

Traces is a series of graphite drawings of abstracted mountains. Each piece starts with

a slick scenic photograph taken from a commercial source. The seductive representation has its intended effect on me: I want a mountain of my own.

I choose the photograph for its dazzling colors and light, then extract the subject from

its context. I have claimed it, and the isolated peak becomes my starting point.

The tracing grows as a slow accumulation of tiny pencil marks, densely applied and smudged with my fingers. Poly film is a touch-sensitive material, which is what the process has been about for me-- the interaction between hand and paper as I record

the shadows that define the form.

The finished drawing is a lacy topography, the edges of absent trees and foothills still visible. The physicality of the graphite surface does not make up for what is missing.

The mountain's elusiveness seems completely appropriate.

Source: The MAC

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Comments

alexander troup Verified

This looks like a good show in the Uptown Area and so I will stop by, relizing the hamburger place is closed and get a ice coffee at Starbucks, then walk on over...the Mac could have a come back, I hope so, things get very stagnet in that area, besides a Cemetery and restraunts, until then, one upon at time residence in he area. A.T. h.2.0

8 months, 1 week ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )