Collecting Drama
Hedreen Gallery, Lee Center for the Arts, Seattle, WA
Collecting Drama
Hedreen Gallery, Lee Center for the Arts, Seattle, WA
Artist: Kenneth Callahan, Marc Chagall, Nina Mikhailenko, Anthony Quinn, Robert Rauschenberg, Cindy Sherman
Medium: Mixed
Run of show: February 14 – May 31, 2006
Venue: Hedreen Gallery, Lee Center for the Arts
Press Release:
Running from 21 June to 31 August, the exhibition includes major works by the Gao Brothers, Nick Knight and Claire Morgan.
The exhibition is centered around the Gao Brothers' seminal work, 'The Execution of Christ.' A grandiose, life size, bronze sculpture, the piece is an appropriation of Manet's 'The Execution of Emperor Maximilian'. In true political pop fashion, the firing squad are re-made as seven life size Chairman Maos, and the figure of the emperor is replaced with a portrayal of Jesus. It references firstly the oppression of organised religion, in particular Christianity under Mao's regime and during the Cultural Revolution, but also the Gao's own experience of losing their father when he was arrested and executed during this period.
Of all the themes this work references, the exhibition focuses specifically on the moment of liminality the sculpture exists in. At its most dramatic, a space between life and death, but also between presence and absence, the secular and the religious. As Jesus stares down the barrels of six rifles, death is present as a kind of threshold in which there is this potential for transition, rather than a final or end point.