VLEPO GALLERY
36 Richmond
Terrace
Staten Island,
New York 10301
Contact: Tanya
Trivizas
718-4220764
REVERSAL takes place at VLEPO
GALLERY.
The exhibition
entitled REVERSAL opens Saturday, April 30th and continues until May
28th. Opening reception will be held Saturday, April 30th,
3-6pm.
REVERSAL is the
collaborative project of a small group of people brought together by chance.
The group is known informally as “The Ekphrasis
Group”, after the literary form that inspired their undertaking: ekphrasis refers to the verbal description of a visual
representation. Think “Bob and Ray” if you’re of the generation that enjoyed
that radio program and remember Bob’s enthusiastic and detailed description of
his vacation photos to Ray (and by extension, to his radio audience): he’d end
by saying “I sure wish you folks out there in radioland
could see these pictures.”
The project that
The Ekphrasis Group developed is, in fact, a kind of
reverse ekphrasis. They have reverted W.H. Auden’s ekphrastic poem “La Musée des Beaux Arts”, in which Auden
describes Breughel’s painting about the myth of Icarus, to “retranslate” the poem into a visual medium.
The group was brought together by an advertisement that Carrie Cooperider ran in The Window, a small non-commercial exhibition space in TriBeCa (no longer in operation) that was run by another collaborative group, asking for artists and non-artists to help her realize the project of re-imagining Auden’s poem. Ultimately, Cooperider and four other artists formed the core of the group; two of these were from the collaborative Window group and two were passers-by. Besides Cooperider, the members of the group are: Dina Helal, Noël Jefferson, Margaret Krug, and Ida Simonsen. A fifth respondent, Goksu Yolac, was ultimately unable to participate but helped to get the project started.
The result is a
multi-media installation incorporating video, photography, sculpture and
performance that reflects the synchrony and synthesis of the discussions that
took place among the group over a period of several months.
Noel E. Jefferson
Award winning photographer, Noel E. Jefferson's fine art photos have exhibited
at MoMA, throughout the USA and Europe. A dozen of her September 11th images are on
permanent exhibit at the Manhattan Public Library. Noel began photography at 10
years of age in the genre of photojournalism and subsequently travel photography and the intimate portrait.
Margaret Krug
Painter, MFA, painting, School of the Art Institute of Chicago Exhibitions:
AIR Gallery, The Window Gallery, The Painting Center, The NIX Gallery, Whitney
Museum of American Art in New York City, the Art Institute of Chicago,
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Taller De Arte El Nix in Mexico. Awards for
painting: George D. and Isabella Brown Traveling Fellowship, artist residency
in Cabris, France. Visiting artist/lecturer: Taller
De Arte El Nix, Mexico, Spannocchia Foundation, Italy.
Taught painting at School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Teaches
painting and drawing at Parsons School of Design and Painting on Panels at Spannocchia Foundation in Italy. Senior
Lecturer at Whitney Museum of American Art.
Dina Helal
Dina Helal’s recent work consists of small mixed media works that draw attention
to details and connections between seemingly disparate elements of place,
space, time, and memory. Exhibitions include Babes, Holland Tunnel, Brooklyn,
New York, (2005), The Wandering Library Project, Venice, 20/20, (2003), and The
Window @ 184 Franklin St, New York, (2002-2004). She has been an artist in
residence at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Sweet Briar, Virginia. Dina lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Ida Simonsen
This is her first exhibition
after having created small installations in Milan, Italy on her own and in
collaboration with young Italian artists Paola&Caterina.
Ida has lived in Copenhagen, London, Paris, Milan, L.A., Sydney, Munich and New
York. Not surprisingly, her sculptures and installations express her ongoing
reflections on the universal humanity we all carry versus - and in view of -
our cultural heritage.
Ida moved back to New York one year ago and now lives in Tribeca
Carrie Cooperider
Among her favorite creations over the years have
been The Mundaneum/World
Museum, featuring "The Ethel L Mumma
European Wing of the Mundaneum/World Museum" and
"Not Aloud to Speak: 4,000 Years of Anonymous Poetry at the Mundaneum/WorldMuseum"; the conveniently wallet-sized
"Entitlement Exercises"; "Transwestites"
(European Cowboys); and "Folk Vegetable Figures of the French
Revolution". She recently decided to abandon the life of Lonely Genius to
pursue collaborative work; the result is the current show at Vlepo Gallery.