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May 27
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Fresh Dirt members attend international Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism Saint-Cirq-Lapopie France 2024

By Exhibition, Fresh Dirt, Performance No Comments

Fresh Dirt members traveled to France to attend Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism Saint-Cirq-Lapopie France. This event/exhibition was held in celebration of the centenary of the first surrealist manifesto. There are photographs and a description of the Saint-Cirq under Events.

Events

Saint-Cirq-Lapopie is a small village in south-western France. The village is on a steep cliff, originally selected for defense, and is home to the André Breton Maison and a popular travel location.

Saint-Cirq-Lapopie has beautiful stone buildings and brown-tiled roofs that date back to the13th to 16th century.

A summary with photographs can be found on the Fresh Dirt site under Events.

André Breton Maison with plaza and performance space. © Janice Hathaway

André Breton returned to Paris after the war and acquired the Maison in 1951. He and his wife Elsa Breton used the house to welcome surrealists including Benjamin Perét, Max Ernst, Toyen, Man Ray and more. Working together, they created magazines, publications, surrealist games and the international exhibitions.

André Breton Maison sign. © Janice Hathaway
The river below Saint-Cirq-Lapopie.
The river below Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. © Janice Hathaway
Saint-Cirq-Lapopie © Janice Hathaway
Saint-Cirq-Lapopie © Janice Hathaway
Saint-Cirq-Lapopie stone buildings and brown-tiled roofs fron the13th to 16th century. © Janice Hathaway
A steep walk in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie at sunset. © Janice Hathaway
A stone buildings that dates back to the13th to 16th century. © Janice Hathaway
Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. © Janice Hathaway
Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. © Janice Hathaway
Apr 06
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Fresh Dirt hosts international Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism Alabama 2024

By Fresh Dirt No Comments

Fresh Dirt hosted an international event Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism Alabama Exhibition Opening Ceremonies & Performances on Friday March 15 – 16 2024 with the exhibition though April. This international series began in Cairo Egypt in 2021 and has continued in Budapest Hungary, Birmingham and Eutaw Alabama and Saint-Cirq-Lapopie France.

Fresh Dirt thanks the more than 50 people that participated in Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism Alabama.

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For more information, look at the Fresh Dirt Events link on this site.

Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism Alabama Event

Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism Alabama

Carl Aniel, Cilla Vee, Magdalena Benavente, Jay Blackwood, Verónica Cabanillas, Doug Campbell, Corran Gourlay, Laura Cosiglia, David Coulter, William Davidson, Mohsen Elbelasy, Mary Foshee, Jean-Jacques Gaudel, Tunç Gençer, Bruce Golden, Janice Hathaway, Sherri Higgins, Shelley Hirsch, Patrick Hourihan, Dora Hembree, Rachel Inman, Jaime Alfaro Ngwazí, Ghadah Kamal, Taya King, Rik Lina, Delphine McKinsey, Doctor Khlurr  (Clifford McPeek), Michael Flash Mills, Thomas Mordant, David Nadeau, Jesse Narens, Irene Plazewska, Mitchell Poor, John Richardson, U’u’ (Aiden Reasoning), SI Reasoning, Taylor Rouss, Ody Saban, Ron Sakolsky, Joe Simpkins, Gregg Simpson, LaDonna Smith, Wedgewood Steventon, Darren Thomas, John Welson, Tim White, Johnny Williams, Neko Linda Williams, Craig Wilson, Frank Wright

Sep 19
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Collaboration by John Richardson and Janice Hathaway, 2023

By Collective No Comments

Surrealist colleagues Janice Hathaway (USA) and John Richardson (Wales) engaged collectively to produce collage and writing for Collaborations 2023.

The experience of collaboration with Janice, one suffused with warmth, the spirit of comradeship, black humour, reciprocity and an absence of ego has been truly liberating, stimulating new ideas and approaches.

May the journey continue as we take new roads to reveal glimpses of the Marvellous . . .

~ John Richardson

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JR-JH-catalog-cover
Feb 24
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Laurent Doucet: The Egyptian movement was neither subordinate nor secondary in its development to what was happening in Paris

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Laurent Doucet : Le mouvement égyptien n’était ni subordonné ni secondaire dans son développement par rapport à ce qui se passait à Paris

The following is a translation of a French article Laurent Doucet : Le mouvement égyptien n’était ni subordonné ni secondaire dans son développement par rapport à ce qui se passait à Paris

by Névine Lameï, Mercredi, 23 février 2022

Laurent Doucet(Photo : N vine Lame )

Laurent Doucet, writer, poet, director of the Maison André Breton and president of the cultural association La Rose Impossible, municipality of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie.

Al-Ahram Hebdo: How did the idea of ​​an international exhibition on surrealism come about, to be held in Egypt, in collaboration with Maison André Breton, La Rose Impossible and contemporary surrealist groups around the world?

Laurent Doucet: La Maison André Breton and La Rose Impossible have been contacted for co-organization work, by the new Egyptian surrealist group from the Middle East and North Africa, founded in 2019 by Mohsen ElBelasy (general director of the International Exhibition of Surrealism in Egypt). Over the past two years, surrealist activities in the Middle East and North Africa have returned, connected to many surrealist groups around the world. Hence, today, the international exhibition of surrealism in Egypt, which was born of collective work and which is considered the second of its kind in the history of the country.

Surrealism witnessed, in the 1930s and 1940s, exceptional cultural relations between Egypt and France. At that time, Egyptian surrealism was neither subordinate nor secondary in its development to what was happening in Paris, but original, innovative and creative, with its founder Georges Henein (1914-1973) and the Art et Liberté group.

In the words of the initiator and animator of surrealism, the poet André Breton, addressed to Georges Henein: “If the storm had two wings, one would be here and the other in Egypt”. Today, in Egypt, surrealism amazes us again with its strangeness, its social networks and its multiple communicative tools at the local and global levels.

— Can you tell us about the link between the Maison André Breton and the association La Rose Impossible, which participate in the organization of this international event?

— In 1951, André Breton acquired the house where he would stay until his death in 1966. Today, it has been acquired by the municipality of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie under the impetus of the association La Rose Impossible. The latter, founded in 2014, is in charge of the cultural management of the place, which has become a very active international center of surrealism and citizens of the world.

— What is the message that such an exhibition on surrealism can convey to us today?

— Born of the worst wars and colonizations, surrealism wants to be a movement of revolt. A humanist movement for emancipation without borders. Its goal is to counterbalance the violence of human societies and economic systems, for more pacifism, more equality, more freedom and more creativity. Today, the International Exhibition of Surrealism has come to prolong Egyptian surrealism and give an insight into the current state of this great international movement in the contemporary world.

Feb 24
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Surrealism in all its forms

By Uncategorized No Comments

Le surréalisme dans tous ses états

The following is a translation of a French article Le surréalisme dans tous ses états by Névine Lameï, Mercredi, 23 février 2022

Surrealism in all its forms

Névine Lameï, Mercredi, 23 février 2022

An international exhibition on surrealism is being held until March 2 in Egypt. And its second part is supposed to take place in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, France. Guided tour with Clément Gaesler, French curator of the exhibition, given at the Kodak Passage.

LaDonna SmithLa Donna Smith on violin, during the opening. (Photo: Nvine Lame)

The kodak passage space, with its panoramic windows overlooking Adli Street, in downtown Cairo, hosts an international exhibition on surrealism, exhibiting paintings, collages and drawings. “The works of 150 artists, from 28 countries, are divided into groups. Each country has its own pavilion and creative wall. Everything is based on the exploration of the functioning of thought, desire, chance, madness, sleep, hypnosis, humor, hybridization, fantasy, carnal love. and the banality of reality,” explains Clément Gaesler, curator of the exhibition and conservation attaché at the André Breton house.

Gaesler launches the visit by starting with the Maison André Breton, the French pavilion, the most poetic of the exhibition, bringing together 40 surrealist works, in small formats, at the entrance to the Kodak Passage.

We approach the drawings of Alain Pillard, with his mysterious shadows, his carnivalesque silhouettes, his pseudo-magical and iconic images diverted into funny things, with his fantastic little tribes. “Pillard’s art frees itself from the old humanist prejudice that subjugates man to the center of the Universe. And this, by revisiting an animal, fantastic and primitive mythology of human societies”, underlines Gaesler. Eccentric and wacky, Prillard apprehends, through language and image, a form of mental revolution, in a kind of “humorous and seditious investigation”. It’s like the recreation of a myth or even a departure into the unknown.

As for Olivier Orus, he takes us into a more luminous, blurred and diaphanous world, with his ink drawings. “The universe of Orus, with pulsating sensations and subtle bodies, with formal vocabulary and concretized vagueness, advocates the matching of heterogeneous objects, in interaction with the dream, with the unconscious, with the impalpable” , indicates Gaesler, who reviews, thereafter, the work of Lou Dubois, this poet in words and images, exposing games of collage of intertextuality and resemblance, very tasty. “I am passionate about this 19th century aristocratic character painted with great dreamlikeness by Lou Duboi, in the spirit of a traveler-thinker beyond a metapsychic and kaleidoscopic, heterogeneous and erotic universe. The artist reuses old boxes from entomologists and naturalized specimens (morpho butterfly, elephant tail, primate skull, etc.), specifies the curator of the exhibition.

The French pavilion is equipped with a small table, with reference books on surrealism. “We offer the visitor all the possibilities to dive into the world of surrealism, a world more dreamlike than logical, made of hallucination than reality, which allows the unconscious to imagine, dream and express itself. against the established order and social conventions,” he adds.

On the right of the large exhibition hall hang the works of the British group La Sirena, dealing with the question of gender, differences and otherness. “How can we think of our identities today through the prism of questions of hybridization, desire, freedom, evolution? The mermaid, this hybrid being, was chosen to be at the center of the surrealist adventures of the group of artists, who investigate themselves in the light of the conceptualists: found object and objective chance,” says Gaesler.

With Gaesler, we take a momentary break to savor a surreal piece played on the violin by the American La Donna Smith, then we move on to a physical theater performance, Najda in Cairo, based on an autobiographical story by André Breton. And this, on the occasion of the opening which took place on February 15, between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.

In the age of the digital revolution

The visit resumes with Gaesler. Now it is the turn of the Egyptian surrealist group, representing the Middle East and North Africa. We then discover the work of Mohsen ElBelasy, editor-in-chief of online surrealist magazines: The Room, La Belle Inutile Editions and the Sulfur Surrealist Jungle.

ElBelasy develops a new Egyptian surrealism, linked to technological transformations, to digital, with collage games, transparent backgrounds and moving ghost images. Images inspired by the surrealist authenticity of Dali. “Mohsen ElBelasy is an excellent webmaster. It was he who created a manifesto of the digital field, through which he contacted all the surrealist groups around the world to meet in Cairo”, appreciates Gaesler. And to add: “Personally, I find that the Egyptian group as a whole dares to do avant-garde things that awaken our repressed impulses in a chaotic way, like Cairo and its mutations”.

The works of the Egyptian group are hung one above the other, thus mixing eras, times, the true, the false, the real and the surreal. ElBelasy’s wife, Ghadah Kamal, exhibits her work The Funeral of the Elephant on the same wall. “I go beyond the limits of reason with giant animal creatures, opposed to miniatures”, explains the artist.

The young Fairouz Al-Taweela, for her part, lends herself to a very colorful and very childish surrealist game, between the lost and the broken. His world of toys, arranged in disorder, piques the eye. And to end the visit in style, Gaesler approaches the four large-format surrealist paintings by the American Abdullah Ali Butler. “Butler is rather oriented towards a childish aesthetic sensibility, which has a naive and fantastical dimension, reminiscent of the surrealism, of the Mexican Leonora Carrington, with its magical world of ironic sorcery, fantasized ball, animals gifted with words, wacky hybrids, strange and deformed creatures, culinary alchemy and dreamlike universe”, concludes the curator of the exhibition. This international event on surrealism takes place until March, in several places in Cairo, including the Kodak Passage, but also the Lamassat gallery, still in the city center. An opportunity to share thoughts outside the codes, drawing from the depths of the human.

 

 

Jan 22
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Theo van Baaren

Unique surrealism library for Boijmans Van Beuningen

By Museum No Comments

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen will receive an impressive and unique library of surrealism. The library is an important addition to the museum’s world-famous collection of surrealism and comes from the collector couple Laurens Vancrevel and Frida de Jong.

The donation includes monographs, catalogs and literature on Surrealism and ranges from poetry and prose to essays published in various languages. More than four thousand often unique titles from the founding of surrealism to the present day will be transferred to Boijmans at a date to be determined. Thanks to the donation, the museum will in future have a very extensive collection of surrealist publications. As a result of this, the museum wanted to open a study center to study surrealism, which will be a world first.

Enrichment of Boijmans’ surrealism collection

The Boijmans collection of surrealism has been brought together since the 1960s. This collection makes Rotterdam the only city in the Netherlands that has a core collection of surrealism at world level, with masterpieces by, among others, Salvador Dalí and René Magritte. The library’s current collection of surrealist editions is related to the museum’s art collection, as well as many general basic works by surrealist authors. What is special about the donated library is that it contains a real study and work collection, which has been gradually built up since 1960 and fully reflects the cohesion of all the arts and political ideas within Surrealism. The collection also provides a good impression of the strong international character of the movement. Curator of modern and contemporary art, Saskia van Kampen-Prein: “With this generous donation, the traditional division between surrealist art and literature is dissolved.”

Study center

In the future knowledge center of the museum, which is being realized as part of the renovation, the pieces from the existing collection of surrealist publications by Boijmans and the library of Vancrevel and De Jong can be consulted in the study center on surrealism to be set up for this purpose. The center will be open to anyone interested in surrealism; lovers of surreal art and literature as well as professionals. For the time being, there is no comparable, comprehensive library of surrealism anywhere. Of course there are other libraries worldwide that have many surrealist publications, but they are not as complete as Boijmans’s will be in the future. The titles from the Bibliothèque Kandinsky in Paris and the library of the MoMA in New York, for example, are mainly focused on the visual arts of surrealism. Laurens Vancrevel and Frida de Jong: “It is a brilliant idea by Sjarel Ex to set up a study center on surrealism in the museum’s planned knowledge center. This is a striking novelty for the museum presentation of surrealist art, not only in our own country, but also internationally. This makes it clear that in surrealism, as a philosophy of creativity, visual art is not separate from poetry and the creator’s philosophy of life. Our surrealism library will be able to come into its own there. ”

Vancrevel and De Jong

Boijmans has had a warm relationship with Vancrevel and De Jong for years and the couple have been closely involved with the museum for a long time. A few years ago, Vancrevel wrote an article about the museum’s collection of surrealist publications for the file catalog “A Dream Collection.” Surrealism in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen ‘which was published in 2017. In the years that followed, he and De Jong donated 50 works of art to the museum by surrealists such as J.H. Moesman, Willem van Leusden, Kristians Tonny, Jan Schlechter Duvall, Theo van Baaren and Her de Vries. Curator Saskia van Kampen-Prein and Vancrevel are currently writing a Boijmans Study about this. This richly illustrated edition will be published in the fall of 2021 under the title “Creative Coincidence.” Surrealism from the collection of Laurens Vancrevel and Frida de Jong. “After these previous contributions and art gifts, Vancrevel and De Jong now also donate their library of surrealism to Boijmans.

Special art gift

Every year, Boijmans Van Beuningen receives an average of a few hundred gifts. Major donations recently received by the museum were those from Frans Koster and Leen Quist, including European modern ceramics, and those from Cor de Wit and Sjoukje de Wit-Jelsma, with Scandinavian glassware. However, such donations are seldom as extensive as the surrealism library of Vancrevel and De Jong. In addition, their donation fits in extremely well with surrealism as one of the focal points of the museum.

Source: Press release Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

Image: Work by Theo van Baaren, Offer, 1989. Gift from the artist to Laurens Vancrevel and Frida de Jong in 1989 and donated to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in 2018

Jun 22
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A Spark in Search of a Powder Key

By Declaration No Comments

Rebellion is its own justification, completely independent of the chance it has to modify the state of affairs that gives rise to it. It’s a spark in the wind, but a spark in search of a powder keg.

André Breton

If only one thing has brought me joy in the last few weeks, it began when the matriarchs at Unist’ot’en burned the Canadian flag and declared reconciliation is dead. Like wildfire, it swept through the hearts of youth across the territories. Reconciliation was a distraction, a way for them to dangle a carrot in front of us and trick us into behaving. Do we not have a right to the land stolen from our ancestors? It’s time to shut everything the fuck down!

Tawinikay (aka Southern Wind Woman)

Spark

T he toxic cargo carried in Canadian pipelines, whether it be tar sands oil or fracked liquid natural gas (LNG), is, according to all serious climate scientists, a major, perhaps even decisive contribution to global warming, i.e. ecological catastrophe.   Meant to fuel industrial expansion, the pipelines have themselves become fuel for revolt. Designed to move these dirty fossil fuels from one location to another, they are a crucial element in normalizing the dubious paradise of unlimited growth in awe of which all obedient consumer/citizens are supposed to genuflect. In what the colonial mapmakers have called British Columbia (BC), resource extraction has always been the name of the game. However, the emergence in February of this year of a widespread oppositional network ranging from “land back” Indigenous warriors to elder traditionalists and from Extinction Rebellion activists to anarchist insurrectionaries was heartening. Railways, highways and ferries were blockaded, provincial legislatures, government administrative offices, banks and corporate headquarters were occupied. The catalyst for this rebellion was a widespread Indigenous uprising that refused the illusory promises of reconciliation. Together, these rebel forces disrupted business as usual in solidarity with the Unist’ot’en Big Frog clan of the Wet’suwet’en tribal house.

​As objective chance would have it, the primary Indigenous land defense camp is situated not far from the same Hazelton, B.C. area to which surrealist Kurt Seligmann and his wife Arlette had journeyed in 1938. During that time, they visited Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en villages, marveled at the imaginative power of the totem poles and ceremonial objects, made field notes, shot 16mm film, collected stories and recorded mythic histories. Now, in 2020, growing numbers of these same Indigenous peoples have been threatening to bring the Canadian economy to a grinding halt. Unwilling to be bought off by corporate petrodollars or mollified by a legal system that has never done anything but pacify, brutalize, or betray them in the process of stealing their land, Indigenous peoples passionately fought back against the forces of colonial law and order in a radical whirlwind of willful disobedience and social disruption. One action built upon another in creating a rolling momentum that seemed unstoppable. When one railroad blockade would be busted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), another would spring up in its place elsewhere extending the frontlines of the battle all across the continent. Then the debilitating Covid-19 virus arrived to compound the damage that had previously been done to the capitalist economy by the incendiary virus of revolt. The resistance of these Indigenous communities against the pipelines concerns all of us, worldwide, since they are on the front lines of the struggle to prevent cataclysmic climate change.

​In the future, a key question will be whether Canadian authorities can successfully put the genie of Indigenous rebellion back in the colonial bottle of “reconciliation”. As surrealists, we hope they will not, and we stand in solidarity with the unreconciled insurgent spirit of defiant Indigenous resistance. A new reality is to be invented and lived instead of the one that today as yesterday imposes its environmental miserabilism and its colonialist and racist hierarchies.  As surrealists, we honor our historical affinity with the Kwakwaka’wakw Peace Dance headdress that for so long had occupied a place of reverence in André Breton’s study during his lifetime before being ceremoniously returned in 2003 to Alert Bay on Cormorant Island by his daughter, Aube Elléouet, in keeping with her father’s wishes. With this former correspondence in mind, we presently assert that our ongoing desire to manifest the emancipation of the human community as distinctively undertaken in the surrealist domain of intervention is in perfect harmony with the fight of the Indigenous communities of the Americas against globalized Western Civilisation and its ecocidal folly.

Surrealists in the United States: Gale Ahrens, Will Alexander, Andy Alper, Byron Baker, J.K. Bogartte, Eric Bragg, Thom Burns, John Clark, Casi Cline, Steven Cline, Jennifer Cohen, Laura Corsiglia, David Coulter, Jean-Jacques Dauben, Rikki Ducornet, Terri Engels, Barrett John Erickson, Alice Farley, Natalia Fernandez, Brandon Freels, Beth Garon, Paul Garon, Robert Green, Maurice Greenia, Brigitte Nicole Grice, Janice Hathaway, Dale Houstman, Karl Howeth, Joseph Jablonski, Timothy Robert Johnson, Robin D.G. Kelly, Paul McRandle, Irene Plazewska, Theresa Plese, Michael Stone-Richards, David Roediger, Penelope Rosemont, Tamara Smith, Steve Smith, Abigail Susik, Sasha Vlad, Joel Williams, Craig S. Wilson

Surrealists in the UK: Jay Blackwood, Paul Cowdell, Jill Fenton, Rachel Fijalkowski, Krzysztof Fijalkowski, Merl Fluin, Kathy Fox, Lorna Kirin, Rob Marsden, Douglas Park, Wedgwood Steventon, Frank Wright, the Leeds Surrealist Group (Gareth Brown, Stephen J. Clark, Kenneth Cox, Luke Dominey, Amalia Higham, Bill Howe, Sarah Metcalf, Peter Overton, Jonathan Tarry, Martin Trippett), the London Surrealist Group (Stuart Inman, Philip Kane, Timothy B. Layden, Jane Sparkes, Darren Thomas) and the surrealists of Wales (Jean Bonnin, Neil Combs, David Greenslade, Jeremy Over, John Richardson, John Welson)

Surrealists in Paris: Ody Saban and The Surrealist Group of Paris (Elise Aru, Michèle Bachelet, Anny Bonnin, Massimo Borghese, Claude-Lucien Cauët, Taisiia Cherkasova, Sylwia Chrostowska, Hervé Delabarre, Alfredo Fernandes, Joël Gayraud, Régis Gayraud, Guy Girard, Michael Löwy, Pierre-André Sauvageot, Bertrand Schmitt, Sylvain Tanquerel, Virginia Tentindo, Michel Zimbacca)

Surrealists in Canada: Montréal (Jacques Desbiens, Peter Dube, Sabatini Lasiesta, Bernar Sancha), Toronto (Beatriz Hausner, Sherri Higgins), Québec City (David Nadeau), Victoria (Erik Volet), the Ottawa Surrealist Group (Jason Abdelhadi, Lake, Patrick Provonost) and the Inner Island Surrealist Group (as.matta, Jesse Gentes, Sheila Nopper, Ron Sakolsky)

The Surrealist Group of Madrid: Eugenio Castro, Andrés Devesa, Jesús Garcia Rodriguez, Vicente Gutiérrez Escudero, Lurdes Martinez, Noé Ortega, Antonio Ramirez, Jose Manuel Rojo, María Santana, Angel Zapata

Surrealists in Sweden: Johannes Bergmark, Erik Bohman, Kalle Eklund, Mattias Forshage, Riyota Kasamatsu, Michael Lundberg, Emma Lundenmark, Maja Lundgren, Kristoffer Noheden, Sebastian Osorio

Surrealists in Holland: Jan Bervoets, Elizé Bleys, Josse De Haan, Rik Lina, Hans Plomp, Pieter Schermer, Wijnand Steemers, Laurens Vancrevel, Her de Vries, Bastiaan Van der Velden

Surrealists in Brazil: Alex Januario, Mário Aldo Barnabé, Diego Cardoso, Elvio Fernandes, Beau Gomez, Rodrigo Qohen, Sergio Lima, Natan Schäfer, Renato Souza

Surrealists in Chile: Jaime Alfaro, Magdalena Benavente, Jorge Herrera F., Miguel Ángel Huerta, Ximena Olguín, Enrique de Santiago, Andrés Soto, Claudia Vila

The Middle East and North Africa Surrealist Group: Algeria (Onfwan Foud), Egypt (Yasser Abdelkawy, Mohsen El-Belasy, Ghadah Kamal), Iraq (Miechel Al Raie), Syria (Tahani Jalloul), and Palestine (Fakhry Ratrout)

Surrealists in Prague: Frantisek Dryje, Joe Grim Feinberg, Katerina Pinosova, Martin Stejskal, Jan Svankmajer

The Athens Surrealist Group (Nikos Stabakis, Theoni Tambaki, Thomas Typaldos, Marianna Xanthopoulou)

Surrealists in Costa Rica: Gaetano Andreoni, Amirah Gazel, Miguel Lohlé, Denis Magarman, Alfonso  Peña

Surrealists in Buenos Aires: Silvia Guiard, Luís Conde, Alejandro Michel

Surrealists in Portugal: Miguel de Carvalho, Luiz Morgadinho

Surrealists in Bucharest (Dan Stanciu), Mexico (Susana Wald), and the Canary Islands (Jose Miguel Perez Corales)

Postscript: During the process of gathering signatures for the above declaration, we were inspired to see its uncompromising stance against white supremacy and police repression reflected in the brightly sparkling flames of the Minneapolis uprising that lit a powder keg of pent-up rage and incited an earth-shaking eruption of spontaneous rebellion in the streets of America. It was only fitting that in solidarity with the uprising about police brutality kicked off by George Floyd’s execution/lynching at the hands of the police, anti-racism protestors in the United States would take direct action by beheading or bringing down statues of Christopher Columbus, genocidal symbol of the colonial expropriation of Native American lands. (Guy Girard, Michael Löwy, Penelope Rosemont, and Ron Sakolsky, June 18, 2020).

Feb 22
Love0

Janice Hathaway Transmorgraphy

By Uncategorized No Comments

Janice Hathaway’s transmorgraphs are living moments as imagery situations. Her exhibition, transmorgraphy, at the Linda Matney Gallery in Williamsburg Virginia from February 7 though March 14 2020 features her new process of artistic composition, which she invented and has developed over the past several decades. Her transmorgraphs suggest a strong interplay between plausible and implausible, teasing the viewer to suspend disbelief in the presence of her “surreality” merging dreams and fantasy, the conscious and unconscious.

Opening Reception: Friday, February 7, 5:30 – 8:30 pm

Closing Event And Artist Presentation: Saturday, March 14, 2:00 – 5:00 pm

Naturalglacé

 

May 03
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Alabama Surrealist Sympatica, an Exhibition and Creative Soire’

By Exhibition, Music, Performance, TransMusic No Comments

Fresh Dirt, the deep South’s newest artistic collective researching practicing Surrealism in the 21st Century, will host an exhibition & creative soire’ in May!  The collective is an offspring of previous incarnations, it’s member’s having originated activities as early as 1974 in Tuscaloosa, infamously known as Raudelunas, out of which birthed the first Birmingham group, Glass Veal and free improvisation pioneers of TransMuseq.

As the artists groups continued, the group has reorganized in 2017 as Fresh Dirt and is actively pursuing to connect artists who are practicing surrealist methods, conceptual theories, and influences in the 21st century. Fresh Dirt is drawing together from the core group to artists in neighboring communities the first Alabama Surrealist Sympatica, an Exhibition and Creative Soire‘ to be hosted by Art Town at East Lake Station.

Along with the visual exhibition of artworks, there will be Surrealist inspired performances by the South’s most potent improvisers in multi-disciplinary exploration involving dance, music, butoh, poetry, and community collective art projects in writing and drawing, and mixed-media.

Artists  are coming from as far as Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia to collaborate and participate in the Fresh Dirt event. Many local artists are involved and participating in the Soire.’ The Alabama Surrealist Sympatica, an Exhibition and Creative Soire‘ will be attended by art historian, Steven Harris, University of Alberta, Canada who is writing a comprehensive history documenting Surrealism in the South (Alabama). The public is invited to experience Fresh Dirt, and participate in a Salon style evening of living art, imagination, discourse, and practicing methods of Surrealist Inquiry.

The reception will feature inedible food and will be held Thursday May 24 starting at 6:00 pm.

ART TOWN at East Lake Station
7611 1st Ave N, Birmingham, Alabama 35206

East Village Arts EVA

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