A study of the different fictional narratives artists create in their work

Curated by Stephanie Young

Artists: Marcy Brafman, Jason Bryant, Jennifer Deppe Parker, Molly Goldfarb, Sally Jerome, Kerry Lessard, Marianne Petit, Zoia Skorodapenko, Mark Torres, Chao Wang, Natalie Collette Wood

Bronx, NY - Bronx River Art Center is pleased to announce an exhibition that explores how artists disguise truth with fiction in order to arrive at a number of different conclusions. Through visual explorations artists seek out unlimited possibilities to distort reality in order to cope, reinvent, or escape their daily realities. Through art we can engage in a fictional form of truth.

The eleven artists chosen for "Keep It In Fiction" will present narrative inspired work that range in media from paper and book arts, sculpture, prints, paintings and digital media. To expand the exhibition's intent each artist created a narrative excerpt, poem or video to accompany the pieces.

Click Here to RSVP for Opening Reception

This is the man that shoots the hares: this is the coat he always wears: with game-bag, powder-horn, and gun he's going out to have some fun."

This excerpt is from the classic German Struwwelpeter Fairy tale "The Story of the Wild Huntsman", a cautionary tale of tables reversed where animal becomes hunter and the hunter hunted. Throughout history artists have essentially disguised truth with fiction in order to arrive at perhaps a more accurate truth, one loaded with nuances. Struwwelpeter opted to create with the notion that it would teach young children important life lessons. He used the fairy tale format to get his ideas across. For this show Marianne Petit presents her version of Stuwwelpeter's fairytale ("The Man Who Went Out Hunting") represented in nine paper cuts that are presented in its entirety.

Sculptor Natalie Collette Wood chose a video to accompany her sculpture. She is known for chairs elaborately overgrown with vegetation that could be imagined to be found in the abandoned garden of a Mrs. Havisham (from Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations -1861). Her video "Dream Dance" depicts dancers overlaid with nature, their movements representative of the tangled and random foliage found growing on her chairs.

Jennifer Deppe Parker chose to create a poem that puts her in the first person of a natural disaster. Her painting "Typhoon" is depicted as a black and white account that strips away the details and leaving only raw emotion.

These excerpts, along with those of the other eight artists, are displayed alongside the art works in order to push the artist and the viewer out of their comfort zones and encourage them to create their own ideas about the works.

The following events will be presented in conjunction with this exhibition.

Artist Talk: Saturday November 19th, 5 - 6:30 PM

Closing Holiday market/party Saturday Dec 10th , 6 - 9 PM

Curator Stephanie Young is an independent publisher/curator working in New York City. She publishes Vellum Magazine (www.vellumartzine.com) and has curated shows throughout NYC and beyond. She was the Assistant Director at Central Booking NYC (2014-2017) which specializes in Artist’s Books and curates exhibitions furthering the intersection between science and art.

Date:

November 3-December 10, 2022

Opening Reception: Thursday November 3, 2022 6:30-9pm

Gallery Hours:

Tuesday - Friday: 2 - 6 PM
Saturday: 12 - 5 PM

Location:

Bronx River Art Center, Inc, 1087 East Tremont Avenue, Bronx, NY 10460

Entry is Free

For additional Information contact Gail Nathan, (718) 930-7861