For Immediate
Release—Friday, Jan. 11, 2008
Contact:
Tony Hoppa
Assistant Vice President for
Communications
(585) 245-5516
thoppa@geneseo.edu
SUNY Geneseo Exhibit to Display
Keith Morris
Washington Paintings Jan. 28-Feb. 22
Artist's First
Major Exhibition in Western New York
GENESEO, N.Y.—Beyond
the colors and shadows on canvas, artist Keith Morris Washington paints a
complex picture of race and culture in America by memorializing sites where
lynchings occurred. The Bertha V.B. Lederer Gallery at the State University of
New York at Geneseo will present "Within Our Gates: Site and Memory in the
American Landscape" from Jan. 28-Feb. 22 in Brodie Hall.
Washington will deliver
remarks at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 7 in the Gallery, to be followed by an opening
reception from 5-7 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public. Gallery
hours for this exhibit are noon-4 p.m. Monday-Thursday and noon-6 p.m.
Friday-Saturday.
"As a cultural resource for
the region, SUNY Geneseo's new exhibition program will present important works
from new artists, whose pieces are significant for their creativity as well as
their engagement with social and cultural issues," said Cynthia Hawkins,
director of galleries. "'Within Our Gates'" is an excellent example of this new
approach and we're delighted to present Washington's extraordinary work to our
community and western New York."
Following the Oklahoma City
bombing in 1995, Washington thought more about "home-grown terrorism" and began
to research the history of lynching and human sacrifice in the United States.
He expanded his focus across time and place outside of America as well, from
the Aztec and Mayan tribes to the Druid and Celtic clans of the British Isles.
In the end, he concluded the act of lynching, with its expression of irrational
vengeance, to be an indigenous American mechanism for exploitation and control
of the social order.
Influenced by 19th
century Hudson River, Barbizon and Luminist painting, Washington began a series
of mural-like paintings that memorialize the unmarked sites where the savage
attacks on humans took place, focusing on incidents in America from the
Reconstruction era to the present. Each painting's label describes the victim
and the incident to provide historical context for the viewer.
However, unlike earlier
painters who depicted an idealized, noble American landscape, Washington does
not ignore the social order. Instead of a pristine wilderness, Washington
displays a land laced with the interventions of man: roads, split-level ranch
homes, porches and viaducts as well as treacherous swamps and deep, piney
woods. When he visited these actual locations, he found them still to be
dangerous and intimidating.
According to Hawkins,
Washington's choice of scale adds to the scope of the paintings and places
viewers within the range of these tragic events. His wide format, horizontal
shapes are familiar due to the panoramic options of digital photography, but
within this plane, he partitions the canvas into discrete rectangular grids.
The inner structures guide viewers to look deeply into the paintings. The
technique causes a shift in perspective—a warping of the image—and
changes in tone, light quality and color patterns seem to mark memory and the
passage of time."
About the artist
Keith Morris Washington
lives and studies in Boston, where he serves as a member of the faculty at
Massachusetts College of Art. Other works in this series have been shown in the
Museum of the National Center of African American Art in Boston, the Aidekman
Arts Center, Tufts University and the E. M. Bannister Society at Rhode Island
College. His works are in numerous collections.
For more information,
contact Cynthia Hawkins at (585) 245-5813 or hawkins@geneseo.edu.
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