Eyewash@MONK Gallery presents
In Memory of Truth
An installation by Ligorano/Reese

DATES: MARCH 8th ­ APRIL 7th, 2003
OPENING: Saturday, March 8th, 6 - 9 p.m.
HOURS: SAT - SUN, 1 - 6 p.m. and by appointment
LOCATION: eyewash@ MONK Gallery
301 Bedford Ave., (Bedford & S. 1st St.)
Brooklyn, NY 11211

Perilous times like these demand to be answered. They beg for a sign of certainty; some revelation of knowledge and a sense of wisdom.

In Memory of Truth takes off from the debate attributed to the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas regarding the passage of angels. Over time the philosopher’s original proposition has been rephrased to be about angels dancing on a pin.

Ligorano/Reese continue this reinterpretation with their latest installation. Like many of the artists’ other pieces, In Memory of Truth combines disparate media. The artists manipulate imagery from print, film, and internet sources to reveal their latent political meanings and messages.

Their work humorously plays with incongruencies between imagery and scale. Using a custom-designed optical system incorporating a micro LCD display and primary lens, the artists have devised a way to project moving video images on the head of a pin. The viewer will see a montage of Hollywood films with the aid of a magnifying glass. The growing militarization of society and today’s current events go hand in hand with the media’s portrayal of war and glorification of patriotism.

“Warsaw, Beirut, Belfast... the streets themselves have now become a permanent film-set.... The West... has now plunged into the transpolitcal pan-cinema of the nuclear age, into an entirely cinematic vision of the world.... Those American TV channels which broadcast news footage around the clock... have understood this point very well. Because in fact this isn’t really news footage any longer, but the raw material of vision...”
    Paul Virilio,
    War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception (1984)

LIGORANO/REESE
Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese have been collaborating for many years. They make installations, artists’ books and videos. Granary Books in 2003 has just published a trade edition and limited edition of Turning Leaves of Mind, an artists’ book in collaboration with the poet Gerrit Lansing. They will be presenting it at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in May.

They recently showed Breakfast of Champions, an installation about Desert Storm in the show “Critical Consumption,” at the Rotunda Gallery in Brooklyn. Last year, they launched the website www.pureproductsusa.com. Home for their political art series the Pure Products of America, the artists advertise and sell their limited editions over the internet. They will be showing The Last Minute (a sculpture with video) in the exhibition, “Triennial 9: Form and Contents: Corporal Identity -- Body Language,” organized by the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, and the Museum fur Angewandte Kunst (mak) in Frankfurt, Germany in May.

Artist, Educator and Curator LARRY WALCZAK started eyewash in June 1987 on the 3rd Floor of a turn-of-the-century residential building in Williamsburg. Since January 2002, it has been a "migratory gallery," either collaborating with other galleries, or producing shows in borrowed or otherwise temporarily acquired spaces. It specializes in showcasing emerging and mid-career artists from Brooklyn.

F O R F U R T H E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Please contact LARRY WALCZAK at 718 387 2714