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2/5/2003

David Cabrera and Barbara Pollack

TRANS> area, New York

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 3, 6 - 8 pm

TRANS>area is pleased to present Hall Mark, an exhibition project with new works by David Cabrera and Barbara Pollack.

Taking their inspiration from greeting cards and birthday cakes, Cabrera and Pollack have created idiosyncratic investigations of products sold to mark 'celebrations' through video, installation and editions available through TRANS>editions.

Happy Birthday, a new video by Barbara Pollack, shows her son, Max, consuming a photo-cake with an image of his face imprinted on the frosting. Edited in the style of a music video to a techno-remix of the tune, Happy Birthday, Max is seen alternatively eating, playing with and finally destroying the cake; a sequence that parallels the way in which birthday party images (traditionally authored by parents) are simultaneously internalized and rebelled against by the subject (the child). In making this video, Pollack is also humorously investigating her role as mother 'Eat! Eat!' and the dictatorial role of parent as photographer in this seemingly harmless setting. On view will also be several photo-cakes, each featuring a detail of Max's adolescent body, presented as limited edition artworks; the ephemerality of the cakes viscerally underscores the contradiction of birthday party photographs that ostensibly stop a moment in time but cannot prevent the inevitable aging process.

In Greeting Cards: 2003, David Cabrera revisits a work he produced in 1984, in Los Angeles. Cabrera will exhibit a set of greeting cards with psychologically charged texts and digitally drawn graphics as an examination of the impulse to control loved ones through this seemingly friendly format. The cards will be packaged as limited edition artworks, encouraging public participation in the dissemination of this project. In addition, Cabrera will exhibit two mural-size prints on vinyl, Greeting Cards: 2003 Wall Mural, echoing the graphic composition of greeting cards, face-to-face on opposing walls, and simultaneously encasing the viewer within the folds of the card inviting them into the artist's inquiry.

About Barbara Pollack
Barbara Pollack has been exploring the role of family photographs, often using her son Max as protagonist and subject matter, since her installation, The Family of Men, was shown at Thread Waxing Space in 1999. She has had solo shows at the Holly Solomon Gallery and Esso Gallery; her work is in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the New York Public Library and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among many other public collections. In the past year, her videos have been included at shows at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, MoMA/PS1, the Currier Museum, and the Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University. Her video, America's Army, will be on view at Homeland, organized by the Whitney Independent Studio Program at the gallery at the CUNY Graduate Center, concurrent with the exhibition at Trans>area.

About David Cabrera
David Cabrera has been exhibiting since the mid-1980s at a range of venues, including 303 Gallery, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, The Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York, Richard Kuhlenschmidt Gallery in Los Angeles, and The Renaissance Society and Robbin Lockett Gallery in Chicago. Cabrera works in a variety of media sculpture, painting, photography, installation and graphic design-related material often investigating personal historical recountings as filtered through cultural apparatus.

Press package:
1. Cabrera review "The New York Times"
2. Cabrera review "New York NATIVE"
3. Cabrera review "Flash art"
4. Cabrera review "Art in America"

in the image a frame of barbara Pollack 'Sound of music'

TRANS> area
511 west 25 st.# 502
new york, ny 10001
646.486.0252
Gallery hours:
Tuesday - Saturday, 10AM - 6PM

stampa

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