RED, BLACK & BLUE

OUR COUNTRY, PLANET AND POLITICS

Ragouzeos - Mahoney

July 4 - July 27, 2008

Opening Reception: Friday, July 11, 5 - 8 PM

*Featuring art by gallery members and invited guests**
Tom Alberico*	Linda Mahoney*
Jim Giddings	Matthew Peake
Nye Ffarrabas*	Leonard Ragouzeos

The Windham Art Gallery is pleased to present Red, Black & Blue: Patriotism, Planet & Politics, a timely and powerful exhibit of work that addresses many of our country's most urgent and controversial issues such as global warming, the war in Iraq and criticism of the Bush adminstration's affect on US economics, individual freedoms and education.This exhibit will include paintings, mixed media works and a large installation.Windham Art Gallery member-artists, Jim Giddings, Matthew J. Peake and Leonard Ragouzeos will exhibit work, as well as invited artists Tom Alberico, Nye Ffarrabas and Linda Mahoney. This exhibit runs Friday, July 4-Sunday, July 27, with an opening reception on Friday, July 11, 5:00-8:00 PM during Gallery Walk.

Peake, a co-curator, along with Ragouzeos, of this exhibit, will show, Pear Secrets, a painting that reflects on the history of race relations in America.He says that his work, and the show, addresses issues which at first "no one was talking about," then, finally, were "widely aired and reluctantly acknowleged." Images of flags, such as in Jim Giddings' painting of a flag draped over a darkened, scumbled landscape, and in the red rocker with a blue and white-starred cushion in Nye Ffarrabas' installation, Chair Piece, are represented in this show. A portion of Ffarrabas' installation, a centerpiece to this exhibit, was first shown, in different form, in the '60s at the Judson Gallery in New York. Ffarrabas has a long history as an exhibiting artist and was part of the pivotal movements known as Happenings and Fluxus. Her piece, which is comprised of a series of chairs, with variously colored backgrounds and distinct, iconographic allusions, are labeled, for example, "The Bones," "KKK," and "Sanctity"; it is made up of two rows of chairs divided by a folding screen. While the initial impetus for this work was the Vietnam War, Ffarrabas was galvanized by the current administration's policies, including the war in Iraq. "As with this whole installation," Ffarrabas says, "my intention is not so much to shock, as to awaken the viewer."

The other artists in Red, Black & Blue, have also invoked images of war, global warming and President Bush. Bush appears as a giant puppet master behind a podium in a powerful ink on paper work by Leonard Ragouzeos entitled The Marionettes;Bush is quoted in his notorious statement, "Is Our Children Learning?" in one of three paintings by Tom Alberico that feature portraits of children with images in the corners of the paintings that bring to mind the atrocities of 9/11, Abu Ghraib and the fate of polar bears on melting ice caps. Mahoney's paintings, such as Northern Landscape with CO2, and Arctic Fox, ironically suggest harmony through their bright colors and lively narrative, but on closer examination show the sad toll of toxins on the environment and, particularly, its vulnerable Artic inhabitants.

The title Red, Black and Blue, co-curator Ragouzeos explained, is suggestive and referential, but also abstract and ripe for interpretation. "This being an election year and the sixth year of an unpopular and costly war," he said, "the gallery felt a political show with the big issues like war and environmental degradation, which confront and confound us everyday, demanded a response and an outlet." He explained that the artists were not given specific guidelines but were allowed to interpret the title and create work that expresses their own mood or viewpoint and style of working. For Ragouzeos, "Red, Black, and Blue" has preconceptions and thoughts of the flag, patriotism, red states and blue states, bruises, pain and blood. In his own work, he has only been using black and white since 2002. "For me it is a way to acknowledge the dark period in which I see our country right now, and perhaps many years to come. I'm hoping 2008 can bring some color and optimism back to the White House and how the world perceives us as a nation."