WHEN: October 28, 2011-April 22, 2012.
TITLE: James Drake: Salon of a Thousand Souls
BRIEF ABOUT: Drake has examined the theme of humanity in all of its triumphs, failures, and follies, including war; love and desire; greed, gluttony, and vanity; and the realities of life along the U.S.-Mexico border. The exhibit highlights the recurrent use of guns, mirrors, and vehicles of industry to explore modernity’s impact on human civilization as well as examples of Drake’s use of appropriation and allegory as strategies to underscore the cyclical nature of history. Among the works to be shown are a never-before-exhibited 21-foot red pastel drawing and a wall drawing executed by the artist in the museum specifically for this exhibition. The artist has dedicated much of his creative life to a critique of social, political and economic issues faced by American society. In doing so, he has positioned art as a catalyst for social change.
MORE DETAILS: Call Laura Addison, Curator Contemporary Art at 505.476.5118 or www.nmartmuseum.org.
Editor’s note: During his 35-year career, James Drake has worked with equal fluency in video, photography, sculpture, drawing, and printmaking. He has had over 60 one-person shows and has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including the 2000 Whitney Biennial and the 2007 Venice Biennale. Drake is the recipient of a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts grants and a Nancy Graves Award for Visual Arts. His most recent accolade is a Texas Medal of Arts (2011). His work is in more than 30 museum collections, including the Albright-Knox Gallery, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Blanton Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, Phoenix Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the New Mexico Museum of Art. Born in Lubbock, Texas, in 1946, Drake lived for many years in El Paso, Texas, and presently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Palette News Arts Network/PNAN