An Exhibition of Recent Works By Paul Loughney
On Exhibit October 24, 2009 - January 10, 2010 St. John's University Mezzanine Gallery Manhattan Campus 101 Murray Street New York, NY 10007Hours 8 a.m. - 8 p.m.Information and Directions (718) 990-7476
This exhibition is free of charge and accessible to the handicapped. These conversations are an attempt to piece together events from memories one fragment at a time. Their purpose is to bridge the gap between what was real and what was imagined; the fragments serve as supports to piece events back together. I think of the void not as a place that is unoccupied, but rather as a time and space that seems to be inhabited with a negative energy. It is also a place where one can objectively observe the notions of things in their lives that are ineffective, useless and have no validity – it’s a way to isolate and exercise them. The works themselves do not represent one particular event, incident or memory; they stretch over a period of recent months and merge together as a collective experience of that time. Collage has been my primary medium for the last two years. Work done in collage is a practice of searching, excavating, collecting and reconfiguring. With this new body of work, I seek out pictures of interest; I then separate the positive shapes from the negative spaces. Those negative spaces are collected and represent the edges of emptiness. The remaining negative spaces seem to gravitate towards each other as common threads in terms of color, shape, environment and atmosphere, which help to create a desired feeling in piecing together events. In searching for the images I used in these collages, I began to feel as if I was excavating a site. The pieces exist out there, below the surface - I just had to locate them and reveal their secrets.