Guest Curated by Liz Parks,
Sally Morgan-Lehman & Sally Zunino
Location: the Maxon Mills
June 26th – July 25th, 2010
A foolish dog
bark at the flying bird.
-Bob Marley, “Jah Live,” 1975
The Wassaic Project is pleased to announce Bestiary, an exhibition in various media, curated by Sally Morgan Lehman, Liz Parks and Sally Zunino.
Animals, as the subject of numerous works of art, literature and music, have often acted as allegorical stand-ins to their human counterparts – especially to parlay a moral or political message that might prove otherwise incendiary, or, perhaps conversely, obvious. The Middle Ages’ literary manifestation of this transference was the Bestiary, a collection of moralized fables about both real and fictional animals. In such treatises, the physical or imagined mental characteristics of beasts were
ascribed certain human traits or values.
This exhibition offers a modern take on the medieval Bestiary, with works by 20 contemporary artists in whose work animals play a salient role. The animals are ascribed certain characteristics specific to contemporary times. The visual menagerie created by these works, as well as the others included in the exhibition, acts as a mirror to the society in which we currently live.
Artists:
Jeff Barnett-Winsby, Jonathan Bee, Hannes Bend, Jennifer Catron, Emilie Clark, Carl D’Alvia, Walton Ford, Alexander Gorlizki, Sarah Hardesty, Laurie Hogin, Philip Knoll, Rob Macinnis, Greg Murr, Ruby Palmer, Robert Andrew Parker, Jon Rappleye, John Salvest, Joseph Smolinski, Michael Waugh
