Eyewash@ROMEarts Self Defense a digital photographic installation by Robin Michals DATES: JUNE 1st - JUNE 30th HOURS: SAT + SUN, 12 Noon - 6 p.m., and by appointment OPENING: SAT, JUNE 1st, 7 - 9 p.m. LOCATION: eyewash* @ ROME ARTS, 103 Havemeyer St., Brooklyn, NY 11211, 718 388 2009 Robin Michals, Self Defense 2, b/w inkjet print, 72"w x 42"h, Duratrans, 35"w x 12"h, 2002 "Self Defense" is an installation of photographs focusing on three individual gun owners: one rural, one suburban, one urban. Each man with his gun is the subject of a large b/w inkjet print; these iconic backdrops evoke the stereotypes of gangster, vigilante, and assassin, as viewed from the outside. Paired with each of these stark images is a color Duratrans print displayed in a lightbox, showing a double image of one of the other men, again posing with his weapon. Strongly horizontal, each of these double images reveals a fantasy of having the power to defy the laws of time and space. They are representations of the self, the view from the inside, charged with motion-picture bravado, yet small and still subject to limitations and dangers. Despite a radical shift in scale, each image in the pair contextualizes the other, one gunman becoming the thought bubble, unconscious desire or nightmare of the other. Each individual is both enemy and hero. To feel a surging sense of power and a release from the terrors of human vulnerability, to hold a gun. To experience the rush of adrenaline that accompanies an encounter with danger and be released briefly from the ordinariness of daily life, to shoot a gun. To think of yourself as a bit "bad" in the sense of rebellious, not part of the herd, to own a gun. Tangible object and media conventions converge in the identity of the gun owner, revealing the attraction and pleasure in using technology to transcend human limits. A sort of prosthesis, a gun is a metaphor for technology that seeks to overcome the fragility of the body. Robin Michals has recently exhibited her work at Venetia Kapernekas Fine Arts, the Ninth New York Digital Salon, and eyewash Gallery in New York City. Her work has also been included in exhibits this year at the Crossroads School of Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica and the Robert V. Fullerton Museum at Cal State, San Bernadino. She lives and works in Brooklyn. *eyewash, was started in June 1987 by artist/curator Larry Walczak on the 3rd Floor of a turn-of-the-century residential building in Williamsburg. Having lost that space, since January 2002 it has been a "migratory gallery," either collaborating with other galleries, as with this exhibition, or producing shows in borrowed or otherwise temporarily acquired spaces. It specializes in showcasing emerging and mid-career artists from Brooklyn. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: Please contact Larry Walczak at 718 387 2714 or larryeyewash@earthlink.net