The exhibition include Polaroids, gouache paintings, and a video. The title work Backyard Dreams, is a large-format color photograph of the artist with her son set against a painted backdrop of her grandmother in the garden, harks back to her Afro-Cuban roots. In contrast, the multi-panel Polaroids are abstract, floating images where the real and painted combine to become both timeless and illusionary. There is a dialogue between the literal and suggested, between memory, and acting in the present.
The exhibition, Backyard Dreams, will include Polaroids, gouache paintings, and a video. Two of the large multi-panel Polaroid works entitled Rhapsody and Constellation were recently shown in Dreaming Now, a group show of installation art at the Rose Art Gallery of Brandeis University. This is Campos-Pons' first solo exhibition in New York since Spoken Softly with Mama was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in 1998.
The title work Backyard Dreams, is a large-format color photograph of the artist with her son set against a painted backdrop of her grandmother in the garden, harks back to her Afro-Cuban roots. In contrast, the multi-panel Polaroids are abstract, floating images where the real and painted combine to become both timeless and illusionary. There is a dialogue between the literal and suggested, between memory, and acting in the present.
Campos-Pons has always worked in many mediums; her earliest works are hybrids of paintings and reliefs. Each exhibition, performance and installation combines new and pre-existing works, adapting the ensemble in ways which give each project new meaning defined by site and context. In 2004 Campos-Pons was included in Dak'art- the Contemporary African Art Bienniale in Senegal with a project called Threads of Memory involving sculpture and video set in a former textile factory, and the previous year she created a sculptural installation in Montemarcello, Italy with moon forms and video, entitled Interiority (the same video which will be screened here.)
Born in Montanzas in 1959, Campos-Pons was educated in Cuba at the National School of Art (1976-1979) and at ISA (Higher Institute of Art) (1980-1985). She was part of the first generation after the revolutionary artists group. She moved to North America in 1991, and now lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with her husband and son. A major retrospective of her work entitled Everything is Separated by Water which will open in February 2007 is being organized by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. This exhibition will include forty works in many mediums borrowed from collections including The Art Institute of Chicago, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Norton Museum in Miami.
Julie Saul Gallery
535 West 22 Street 6 Floor New York, NY 10011
Closed from December 24th - January 3rd