Megan Dearmond

James Graham

Julia Latane

Perfect Worlds
In the dark history of fairy tales the hero/heroine must overcome seemingly overwhelming odds to survive. During more recent times, of Disneyfication and gratification, feel-good culture, we always triumph. In the original tales they often didn't manage to do this. Fairies, et al were considered dangerous, as their lack of human morals and ethics, their mercurial temperaments and their disdain for the dull and short lived humans did not allow for much care of our magic-less existence and so the tales reflected this hard vision of life. Life was bitter and often twisted. The Greeks had Tragedies, we have realities.
For us there has always been necessities which the basic terms of life must address. This exhibition looks at 3 of these; Food (Latane), Safety (Graham) and Hope(DeArmond). With the first two the third is given reign to make life bearable. But like those original stories the background to the exhibition is not as optimistic as first appears. Behind the utopian vision of a world of fulfillment a realization of the nature of art as appearance rather than actuality is made apparent. This is not supersize me rice but material. These are not safety warnings but images of them, leaving the real danger hidden or unexposed. The hope hidden in the acorn kernel will never mature to a mighty oak, as our hopes may well die unborn, trapped in a jar like Pandora's Greek fairy.
A double edged sword. The attempt at a hope filled world is an existential one, recognizing its own inevitable failure but willing all the same to try to enact it. For to make meaning in the world lies in this attempt itself, regardless of the ultimate outcome. These three artists create things of deliberate beauty, filled with potential, but perceiving the dangers of unbridled enthusiasm, of unthinking celebration. Their works still try to provide an uplifting, even joyous, interaction with this world while never ignoring the dark underbelly from which these modern fables must crawl out from under.