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The New Normal: Art and Politics | Vita Art Center, Ventura CA, October 2022
Main room installation with drawings by Derek Boshier, painting and tapestry by John Nava, wall of works by Dane Goodman |
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| Works by Deborah Lawrence |
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| Works by Dane Goodman |
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| Work by Colin Gray |
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| Book by Derek Boshier |
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| The New Normal | Installation view - Main room |
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| The New Normal | Installation view |
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| The New Normal | Vita Gallery One installation |
Six pieces that are part of the New Normal show at the Vita Art Center in Ventura, California, October 1 to November 2, 2022
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The New Normal | Jacquard Tapestry | 120 x 118 inches | 2022
In June of 2022 the judicial and political commentator Dahlia Lithwick wrote a piece entitled “The Country Has Finally Broken Me.” The title captured the exhaustion and sense of gloom after seeing, in recent years, the erosion of rationality and constructive purpose in the face of virulent irrationality, ghastly gun violence and the aggressive resurgence of ugly bigotry of every sort. But this, Lithwick laments, is “what life is now.” In this “new normal” the long held dream of an “arc of history” bending evermore toward justice seems suddenly and sadly quaint. Worse still, this disheartening new |
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| Untitled (Umbrellas) | Oil on Panel | 60 x 42 inches | 2022 |
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Untitled (Chairs) | Oil on Panel | 60 x 42 inches | 2022
These paintings reverse the common moralism in Western Art of the “Memento Mori.” In such pictures images of an earthly paradise - Arcadia - or of material luxury and voluptuous decadence - the Vanitas - are undercut by a scolding reminder of inevitable corruption and death. In contrast these pictures show a context of disfunction, social chaos, destructive nature and exhausted myths that is countered by an image of a simple, uncomplicated beauty. The consoling reminder of the beautiful penetrates the shroud of the dismal “new normal” and animates the drive to persist, to repair, to create. |
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Nadya Tolokonnikova | Oil on Panel | 16 x 16 inches | 2022
Nadya Tolokonnikova is an artist and musician and a founding member of the Russian anarchist, feminist group Pussy Riot. Following an provocative performance by the group in 2012 in the Moscow Cathedral she was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison. Her time in prison was marked by a long series of physical abuses and a hunger strike. During her incarceration Amnesty International declared her a prisoner of conscience. She was released in late 2013 after nearly two years in custody. In 2014 she won the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought. |
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Tiny Hands | Oil on Panel | 17 x 14 inches | 2016
The witty slogan appeared in protests following the infamous “Access Hollywood” recordings of Donald Trump bragging about his privilege as a celebrity to freely violate women. During the same 2016 campaign period he had bitterly complained about commentary regarding his diminutive hands. The cat’s head is drawn from a painting by Lucian Freud and symbolizes the target of Trump’s gropings. |
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Who Would Jesus Bomb? | Oil on Canvas | 96 x 62 | 2004-5
During the run-up to the Iraq War this classic anti-war slogan was widely seen in street demonstrations protesting the disastrous conflict to come. The figure’s pose mimics that of an important and mysterious ancient Babylonian artifact - pre-Christian and pre-Muslim. The so-called “Queen of the Night” escaped the looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad during the 2003 war. In response to that event Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, famously shrugged “stuff happens.” |
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