AMANDA CURRERI

Description

Romer Young Gallery is pleased to present its third solo exhibition
with Bay Area artist Amanda Curreri. Curreri transforms the gallery
into The Aunque - a space of possibility, a space of the 'even
though'. With both irreverence and with earnestness, The Aunque
serves as a space for reflection on power, identity, and desire in
the face of the violence of contemporary social life. There will be
an opening reception for the artist on Friday, January 11, 6-9pm.

Beginning with the titular language shift from English to Spanish,
Curreri's work invokes a power shift and implicates itself and the
viewer in acts of "reading" and legibility. The phrase "Aunque,
violencia es total" entered Curreri's head like a mantra while on a
long-distance run. Highlighting this meditative state achieved
through physical and sensory experience, Curreri insists on an
equivalence between body knowledge and cerebral understanding as a
crucial tool of negotiating identity. Curreri's work employs an
Active Formalism: a mix of formalism with an insistence on experience
as a way of learning and testing, do-ing and be-ing.

Artworks within The Aunque are a re-envisioned hand-dyed and sewn
flag, multiple paintings, a video, confounding cocktail napkins, and
an invitational play. The diverse languages in effect - color, form,
vernacular, linguistic - all converge via poetry as a pragmatic model
for this new work. Amanda offers: "I was looking for an intimate
one-to-one structure for this work which is what lead me to poems.
Poetry is so flagrantly about heart and commitment and also so much
about the rogue and necessary pied piper figure in society. I asked a
poet friend for insight on what makes something a poem, and, of
course, they said that it is structure and form and then the breaking
and bending of that form." Curreri applies this formalist approach as
a vehicle to push into new spaces of discourse.

On Wednesday, January 30, 7pm, Curreri hosts a performance, Jean
Genet in the Aunque, which utilizes a collaged script of quotes to
create a conversation of poetry and outlaws, performance of selves,
and cross-identification. Pocket-knives optional.

For additional information, please contact the gallery at
415.550.7483 or email [email protected].

More Info

Link

http://www.romeryounggallery.com

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415.550.7483

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