Poetry Reading, Dorian Grey Gallery: Waking From So Rich a Nightmare

PLEASE JOIN US

SUNDAY, JUNE 7th 2—4PM

For a reading to celebrate the release of

Waking From So Rich a Nightmare
by
Gay Giordano

at

Dorian Grey Gallery
437 E. 9th St. at Ave. A
NYC

RSVP: [email protected]

Gay will read selections celebrating
secret lives unraveling in the
darkness of New York City
as well as her exuberant homages
to gardens and nature complemented
by our current exhibition

RICK PROL
UNDER THE STARS

In this exhibition, we enter Prol-world— a place where equilibrium and loss of equilibrium co-exist in exquisite (dis)harmony. Paintings and works on paper in this exhibition span a 35-year period during which Prol employs certain protagonists used symbolically and as metaphor, as self-portraits and portraits of others. The works are akin to poems crafted to achieve an intentionally disjunctive narrative.

Prol’s work was first celebrated in the early 1980’s in New York’s East Village. He brought the seeds of his interests in Shakespeare’s Scottish play, Flamenco music, Martha Graham and Goya to take root in that era’s fertile and fetid punk soil.

Prol’s Dystopian vision and humor are informed in equal measures by his dream world and the “real” world. Broken totems—buckets, doors, windows, light bulbs and the like take their rightful place alongside functioning tools and methods of transport. His attacks and defenses are abstract— there are no good guys or bad guys here—only victims, victimizers and the innocent. Prol’s own Cat-O-Puss, a creature with an elusive and slippery identity, visits his paintings regularly—riding a bicycle, observing the World Trade Center aflame or soaking in a bathtub.

Memory also plays an essential role in Prol’s work. The time travel required to store detailed sense memory is evident in his work. Making new what was there from the start, he utilizes the precise shade of green relished during a childhood night walk in Chinatown or the steep slope of floorboards in a long-abandoned studio to transport the viewer directly to his conscious-unconscious. These works invite us to contemplate the minute and the magnificent, beauty and decay, the “real” and the dreamt. Welcome to Prol-world.

Exhibition Preview: http://www.doriangreygallery.com/current.html