Artist’s new project recycles and re-hangs Provincetown’s plastic street banners; Russia and the new Cold War is the first focus of Jay Critchley’s latest project,
Affirmative Re-Action.
New work will also be shown at two exhibitions at AMP Gallery in Provincetown this summer.
reroot@comcast.net www.jaycritchley.com
Ever wonder what happens to all that plastic that hangs over us on Commercial Street every summer? After the roses have faded and the event is over?
Artist Jay Critchley’s new venture, the Affirmative Re-Action Project, will recycle and recreate these discarded signs and re-hang them over Commercial Street. The first will be installed from May 8-31near Provincetown Town Hall, designed with paint and naturally colored sand.
The concept for this first two-sided banner – 8’ X 30” – is rooted in both the centennial of Provincetown’s historic, fecund decade: 1910-1920, and the new Cold War. Side one reads in large Russian constructivist numbers, 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution and WWI; side two, the word, DEAL.
One hundred years later, Russia looms as a dominant political force. The young American journalist, Communist and Provincetown Player, John Reed, wrote Ten Days That Shook the World, an iconic book about the Russian Revolution. It inspired a riveting black and white documentary by Sergei Eisenstein, and a popular movie, Reds, about Reed, O’Neill and Louise Bryant, played by Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson, respectively.
The artist is seeking donations of old street banners from businesses for his Affirmative Re-Action Project.
Critchley also has new work in two shows scheduled at AMP Gallery in Provincetown this summer, both dealing with race, ethnicity and perception: May 26 – June 8, People of Colors*, sand paintings featuring repurposed advertising images; July 14 – 27, launching an investigative and collaborative new project, The Whiteness House – tarred and feathered**.
* Sand Drawings: People of Colors
Working with the sands of time for over thirty years – encrusting cars and a motel, sandblasting and filling a car – these sand drawings seem frail and intimate. Fracturing the stylized gloss of fashion magazine advertisements with the rawness of naturally colored sands exposes the bones and artifice of the human body on the flat page.
How is our perception of an image altered when a gritty veil or mask of sand is applied? The sand may be black, white, pink, orange or beige. What shades of color do we perceive? What shades of color do we defy?
** The Whiteness House
“The White House. The Whiteness House. The nation’s home takes on an ominous presence with a white President who has defined much of his Presidency based on color – following a black President. How white is a Whiteness House after a black President? How does a white house express its whiteness?
The ongoing project and investigation will invite other artists to collaborate and draw upon cultural signifiers, such as: the White Cube; White Christmas; White Flight; Shades of White; Whitewash; Snow White; White Lies; White, Whiter, Whitest; Whiteout; White Race Films; Black & White mixed race films; People of Color Films; White Lite; White Rainbow; White Lightening; and Whitened Teeth.
Affirmative Re-Action.
New work will also be shown at two exhibitions at AMP Gallery in Provincetown this summer.
reroot@comcast.net www.jaycritchley.com
Ever wonder what happens to all that plastic that hangs over us on Commercial Street every summer? After the roses have faded and the event is over?
Artist Jay Critchley’s new venture, the Affirmative Re-Action Project, will recycle and recreate these discarded signs and re-hang them over Commercial Street. The first will be installed from May 8-31near Provincetown Town Hall, designed with paint and naturally colored sand.
The concept for this first two-sided banner – 8’ X 30” – is rooted in both the centennial of Provincetown’s historic, fecund decade: 1910-1920, and the new Cold War. Side one reads in large Russian constructivist numbers, 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution and WWI; side two, the word, DEAL.
One hundred years later, Russia looms as a dominant political force. The young American journalist, Communist and Provincetown Player, John Reed, wrote Ten Days That Shook the World, an iconic book about the Russian Revolution. It inspired a riveting black and white documentary by Sergei Eisenstein, and a popular movie, Reds, about Reed, O’Neill and Louise Bryant, played by Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson, respectively.
The artist is seeking donations of old street banners from businesses for his Affirmative Re-Action Project.
Critchley also has new work in two shows scheduled at AMP Gallery in Provincetown this summer, both dealing with race, ethnicity and perception: May 26 – June 8, People of Colors*, sand paintings featuring repurposed advertising images; July 14 – 27, launching an investigative and collaborative new project, The Whiteness House – tarred and feathered**.
* Sand Drawings: People of Colors
Working with the sands of time for over thirty years – encrusting cars and a motel, sandblasting and filling a car – these sand drawings seem frail and intimate. Fracturing the stylized gloss of fashion magazine advertisements with the rawness of naturally colored sands exposes the bones and artifice of the human body on the flat page.
How is our perception of an image altered when a gritty veil or mask of sand is applied? The sand may be black, white, pink, orange or beige. What shades of color do we perceive? What shades of color do we defy?
** The Whiteness House
“The White House. The Whiteness House. The nation’s home takes on an ominous presence with a white President who has defined much of his Presidency based on color – following a black President. How white is a Whiteness House after a black President? How does a white house express its whiteness?
The ongoing project and investigation will invite other artists to collaborate and draw upon cultural signifiers, such as: the White Cube; White Christmas; White Flight; Shades of White; Whitewash; Snow White; White Lies; White, Whiter, Whitest; Whiteout; White Race Films; Black & White mixed race films; People of Color Films; White Lite; White Rainbow; White Lightening; and Whitened Teeth.
