Fwd: Gallery Exhibition - Press Release

[Andre Leroux]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Cathy McLaurin <cathyesse...@yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 3:06 PM
Subject: Gallery Exhibition - Press Release
To: Cathy Mclaurin <cathyesse...@yahoo.com>

Essex Art Center 56 Island St.,Lawrence,MA

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact: Cathy McLaurin, Essex Art Center

978-685-2343

cathyesse...@yahoo.com

 

it’s mine!

Exhibition dates:  March 1 – April 12, 2013

Opening reception: Friday, March 1  5-7 pm with an artist talk by Francesca Ulivi at 5 pm

 

The Elizabeth A. Beland Gallery at Essex Art Center is pleased to present it’s mine!, video, soft sculpture, and installation by Francesca Ulivi.

 

Francesca Ulivi’s installation, "FU Caviar Lux Collection", combines two expensive and exclusive materials: caviar and leather. Hand crafted by the artist, the price of the products is excessively high in relationship to their lack of functionality.  The sculptures’ appearance is weak and pathetic. The caviar guns, rifles, scepters and knives, fashioned from leather and simulated caviar are, thereby, emptied of their violent function, whilst maintaining their violent form, only, now, as decorations. 

 

From her statement: “These objects, being both expensive and relatively non-functional, capture what is only their class functionality. That is, they exist, for those who can afford them, to be gazed upon as symbols of membership to a certain class-strata. To the extent that they fill a certain physical and emotional absence, they attain the value of superficial human presence.

 

‘It’s mine!’ forces the issue of self-identification though material possessions and assertion of power, by reducing the formal language to its impotence and absurdity.”

 

Included in this solo exhibition are two videos that involve puppets and wallpaper handmade by Francesca Ulivi, which question the predominant culture in which human desires are formed in relationship to commercial products.  She hopes to provide a critical environment where the viewer is compelled to question their assumptions and societal “norms” in relationship to their own body and behaviors.

 

Francesca Ulivi is a Boston-based artist who is a 2013 BFA candidate at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/Tufts University. 

Image Attached:  Francesca Ulivi, FU Caviar Gun, hand stitched leather, premo, 2013

    

For additional information about this exhibition or to receive high resolution digital images for publication, please contact Cathy McLaurin cathyessex...@yahoo.com  or  at 978-685-2343.

 

The Elizabeth A. Beland Gallery is located on the first floor of Essex Art Center at 56 Island Street, Lawrence, MA.

Gallery hours:  M-F  10-6

Call for additional evening hours 

 

www.essexartcenter.com

Essex Art Center

56 Island St.

Lawrence, MA  01840

978-685-2343