Santa
Monica, 19 October
2000—Track
16 Gallery is pleased
to announce two
new exhibitions:
Don Ed Hardy’s 2000
Dragons and
Enrique Chagoya’s utopiancannibal.org,
both running from
November 18, 2000
through January
20, 2001, with
an opening reception
on November 18,
from 6–8
p.m.
2000
is a Year of the
Dragon in the Asian
zodiac. California
artist Don Ed Hardy
has created a 4'
x 500' scroll painting
of 2,000 dragons
to commemorate this
auspicious dawning
of a new millennium.
This is an expanded
version of a venerable
Asian tradition,
specifically inspired
by the Southern Sung
dynasty (mid-13th
century) dragon painter
Ch'en Jung, whose
most famous work,
the Nine Dragon Scroll,
is in the Boston
Museum of Fine Arts.
The
Asian dragon is a
composite symbol
of all the powerful
and beneficial forces
of nature, and is
particularly related
to water from the
skies, oceans, and
rivers. It is the
primary embodiment
of the notion of
cyclical renewal
and life force. Hardy
has studied Asian
mythology and dragon
lore for over 30
years and lived,
studied, and worked
in Japan. A 1967
graduate of the San
Francisco Art Institute
(which awarded him
an honorary doctorate,
Spring 2000), Hardy
became known for
developing the potential
of tattooing as a
sophisticated art
form in the West,
based on Japanese
tradition. Since
the late 1980s his
paintings, prints,
and works on paper
have been exhibited
in galleries and
museums internationally.
The
concept for 2000
Dragons first occurred
in 1976, another
dragon year (the
Asian zodiac revolves
in 12-year cycles).
The painting was
executed during the
first seven months
of 2000 in acrylic
on a support of synthetic
Tyvek material, light,
strong, and archival.
The images range
from one-inch hieroglyphic
marks based on ancient
Chinese bronze dragon
forms, to 30-foot-long
creatures undulating
among explosive clouds,
waves, and rain forms.
Brush work moves
from explosive splashed "zen
painting" to
meticulous detail.
Emulating classic
Chinese and Japanese
picture scrolls,
the painting presents
a journey that progresses
through periods of
time and weather
changes. Accompanying
the primary scroll
are a number of individual
vertical dragon paintings
in the same variety
of styles.
2000
Dragons will be exhibited
in its entirety from
November 18, 2000-January
20, 2001 at Track
16 Gallery in Santa
Monica, California.
The exhibit will
be accompanied by
a 16-page color booklet
with details of many
parts of the scroll
and a short film
by award winning
documentary filmmaker
Emiko Omori of the
artist at work on
the scroll, as well
as the entire 500
foot painting.
ENRIQUE
CHAGOYA: utopiancannibal.org
The
work of Mexican-born
artist Enrique Chagoya
addresses issues
of multiculturalism
and globalism, history
and popular memory,
colonialism and cultural
imperialism, pop
culture and art history,
with a biting satire
that illuminates
the hypocrisies of
contemporary life.
His work draws upon
a variety of visual
traditions and cultural
stereotypes, icons
of both high and
low culture: popular
super heroes, Disney
characters, political
figures, fragments
from the work of
European Masters
from the Renaissance through the twentieth
century, Catholic
imagery, and pre-Columbian
iconography. In his
recent work, Chagoya
has inverted Western
cultural traditions
by assuming the point
of view of a “primitive” artist
mining the art and
culture of Western
Europe, as European
artists like Gauguin
and Picasso mined
the cultures of Africa,
Latin America, and
Asia.
His
exhibition at Track
16 Gallery, utopiancannibal.org,
includes satirical
works based on nineteenth-century
prints as well as
a series of codex
pieces consisting
of oil an acrylic
paint on bark paper.
With this new work,
Enrique Chagoya continues
to challenge the
viewer to think about
familiar imagery
in new ways and to
understand the complex
cultural politics
of the new world
order.
