Edouard Duval-Carrié is one of the artists in US IS THEM Pizzuti Collection, Columbus Ohio, Until April 2, 2016
Delft Primitive, 2012.
About:
“Edouard Duval-Carrié has produced a very exciting new body of work with his dark “Imaginary Landscapes,” said PAMM Chief Curator Tobias Ostrander. “This suite of sparkling paintings and sculptures dialogue dynamically with the characteristics of the gallery space at PAMM, as well as with the context of tropical Miami as a Caribbean city. This series intriguingly reveals the strong influence of his recent pan-Caribbean research and outlook.”
After Bierstad, The Landing, 2013.
Edouard Duval-Carrié is known for his innovative adaptions of traditional Haitian iconography, which he engages in order to address contemporary social and political conditions. Contrasting his signature use of strident colors, this new project presents works executed entirely in black and silver glitter. Involving extensive research, Imagined Landscapes presents lush tropical scenes that reference specific 19th century paintings executed in the Caribbean and Florida. These paintings, by artists such as Martin Johnson Heade and Frederic Edwin Church, were commissioned as part of Colonialist interests in promoting economic development of these areas of the world. The artists used pictorial effects, imagination and fictions to present the Caribbean as the “New Eden,” a fertile land of possibility. Duval-Carrié’s works translate these historical images into his own contemporary aesthetic language, in order to address the manner in which the tropics of the Caribbean and Florida continue to be sold as tropical paradises, in ways that often obscure traditional economic and social disparities that continue to be perpetuated in these contexts.
After Church, Moonlight in the Tropics, 2013.
Edouard Duval-Carrié: Imagined Landscapes, organized by PAMM, is part of a season of presentations and programs focusing on Caribbean art, and celebrating Miami’s position as a Caribbean capital. On Friday, April 18, 2014, PAMM will open Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, an unprecedented juxtaposition of historical and contemporary works. The culmination of nearly a decade of collaborative research and scholarship organized by El Museo del Barrio in conjunction with the Queens Museum of Art and The Studio Museum in Harlem, the show was redesigned to reflect Miami’s unique Caribbean community. Duval-Carrié’s Le General Toussaint Enfumé (General Touissant Wreathed in Smoke, or Pretty in Pink), 2003 is part of the Caribbean show, as well. Also opening April 18 is a large-scale work by Simon Starling, Inverted Retrograde Theme, USA (House for a Songbird), a recently-acquired installation that traces the paradoxes of modernist architecture in the Caribbean. A large scale installation by artist Hew Locke, a British artist of Guyanese descent, For Those in Peril on the Sea, hangs in the museum’s front entrance.
About the exhibition:
US IS THEM IS A POWERFUL EXHIBITION OF 75 PAINTINGS, SCULPTURE, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND VIDEO BY A GROUP OF 42 INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS WHOSE WORK CONFRONTS ISSUES OF POLITICS, RELIGION, AND RACISM.
Chrystal Explorer, 2013.
The exhibition is organized to reflect timely and potent issues of social justice and current affairs across the world. There exists a long history of artists as social critics from Goya to Manet. Artists are in the unique position to create things of beauty that inspire reflection, elevate our consciousness and fuel a sense of responsibility. The artists in US IS THEM continue that tradition by creating enlightening and thoughtful works that challenge and rearrange stale notions of identity and obsolete notions of difference.
As the title suggests this exhibition focuses on what connects rather than separates us. We live in a global society. What happens abroad impacts us at home. What happens at home reverberates across the world. While we experience dramatic social, cultural, economic, and environmental changes, people across continents share in a continuing fight for social justice, solidarity, and tolerance. This exhibition presents works that respond to and raise awareness about our common human condition.