Read - Duston Spear

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
October 6th, 2005

Exhibition:
Duston Spear: READ

Dates:
October 27th - December 3rd, 2005

Reception:
Thursday, October 27th, 2005, 6 to 8pm

Opening October 27th, 2005, Sara Tecchia Roma New York is pleased to present READ, a new series of paintings by Duston Spear.

Continuing her exploration of word-image conjunctions, this new exhibition uses the war poems of Stephen Crane (1871-1900), best known for Red Badge of Courage, as a source for a new cycle of visual poetry. Rendering the author's words in scrawled lines and conjoining them with emblematic images, she has then vandalized her own painting by going back into the piece with a graffiti artist's intention-a way of reiterating the message, as a warning, to the viewer.

Spear explains: "I took up a relationship with Crane's text, what critic Deborah Frizzell called 'ventriloquizing his lines in word-image conjunctions.' Crane has this black and white take on war-so sarcastic and haunting-'these men were born to drill and die'-and the way he could lullaby a warning-like, 'Do not weep maiden, war is kind...'

"I coupled Crane's words with my inability to turn off NPR in the studio. Even if the static made the words incomprehensible, I could tell by the calmness of the speaker's voice that nothing bad had happened. I put that static into visual form on my paintings by burying certain words of Crane's anti-war poems, covering them with thick oil paint. I'd written them in tar so they had a way of creeping back through-it was a good fight. I liked the way folks were looking at them and reading them even though they couldn't really read the words."

Last March, during a residency at the American Academy in Rome, Spear became inspired by the graffiti in this most ancient of urban sites.

"All of the graffiti-inescapable," notes Spear. "And this is Rome, parlor room to the world! On returning, I showed the photos of my trip to Passion, an inmate at the upstate New York prison where I teach in the college program. Reading the graffiti, she remarked, "Hey, I didn't know that the Bloods were in Italy!" And then I finally understood why the State does not exhibit prisoner's artwork; they're worried that gang messages will be hidden in the picture. Art can be dangerous! That's a great thought. I like that."

She incorporated the techniques of these 'writers' to hit her canvases with words and stencils-new symbols of surveillance and secrecy. Graffiti serving as both an act of vandalism and as an international message board for those that can read the codes.

The title of this comprehensive show of twelve paintings and works on paper-READ-acts as a verb in the present and past tense and as a color or a political affiliation when spoken. Spear directs her viewers to encounter history in the present-the feeling is one of beauty in the cause of urgency. "I write 'We Patriots Slave' and it's not a tag, but a bold loud comment. And I write 'War Night' because that's how in the dark this all feels."

SARA TECCHIA ROMA NEW YORK is located at 529 West 20th Street, between Tenth Avenue and Eleventh Avenue. The gallery is on the second floor. For more information, contact 212-741-2900, or visit www.saratecchia.com