John Digby
dal 6/2/2002 al 21/2/2002
Segnalato da
6/2/2002
John Digby
Russian - American Cultural Center, New York
Collage Exhibition: The Mandelstam Series. John Digby's collages are inspired by books, both literally and figuratively. Committed to an aesthetic of archival permanence in collage, he makes all of his black and white image papers by de-acidifying, recycling and some cases abstracting reproductions of wood engravings from nineteenth-century books. The unusual surfaces of collages are intricately constructed by aprocess of scrubbing and crumpling papers, then drawing on them with acid-freepaste.
Collage Exhibition: The Mandelstam Series
John Digby's collages are inspired by books, both
literally and figuratively. Committed to an aesthetic of archival permanence
in collage, he makes all of his black and white image papers by
de-acidifying, recycling and some cases abstracting reproductions of wood
engravings from nineteenth-century books. The unusual surfaces of collages
are intricately constructed by aprocess of scrubbing and crumpling papers,
then drawing on them with acid-freepaste. Unlike most collagists who build up
layers of contrasting papers, Digby works to achieve a unified composition by
inlaying all of his paper fragments.He cuts out his fine elements with a
surgical scalpel and sets each piece of the composition into place as if
composing a mosaic.
Conceptually, he thinks of his collages as a visual
form of lyric poetry. The Mandelstam Series is directly inspired by the
poetry and prose of Osip Mandelstam, whose harsh life of exile is expressed
in the maze of roads leading nowhere, the broken vectors and color references
to the bleak Siberian landscape.
In connection with
the exhibition opening, there will
be a reading of Mandelstam's poetry in Russian and English from 6:00 to 8:00
P.M. on February7. Included among the readers are actor Rustam Galitch,
clothing designer and collagist Luda Pahl and poet Michael Heller.
John Digby was born in London in 1938. He has exhibited widely in England, France,
the United States and Korea. Three volumes of his
poetry have been published by Anvil Press Poetry, and he has written and
edited several other books. He lives and works in Oyster Bay, New York.
The exhibition is open to the public through February 7-21, during the hours of 12-5 P.M., Tuesday - Friday, at the
Russian-American Cultural Center at 55 John Street, 14th Floor.
Curator: Regina Khidekel.
This exhibition is made possible with public funds from the New York State
Council on the Arts, a state agency, and Dynamo Development Co.
RUSSIAN - AMERICAN CULTURAL CENTER
55 John Street, 14 Floor
New York, NY 10038
telephone: (212) 744-5168