DIALOG : DENVER

Robischon Gallery presents "DIALOG: DENVER," a two-part exhibition to coincide with the city's hosting of the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Working in association with "Dialog: City – An Event Converging Art, Democracy and Digital Media" created by Seth Goldenberg and Liz Newton, Robischon Gallery's "DIALOG: DENVER" Part One is an adjunct exhibition featuring additional works by eight of "Dialog: City's" notable international and national artists. Part two is a special Colorado component with recognized area artists featuring political placard artworks as political yard signs.

In Part One, the participating "Dialog: City" artists offer their unique voices and views on American history, calls for environmental and community action in addition to a re-imagining and re-contextualizing of who we are. The exhibition begins with a kind of sounding and simultaneous call to America's past and its present with Ann Hamliton's two-bell phora · spinning sousaphone. With a form and tone both familiar and mysterious, the instrument plays a continuous recording of distorted John Philip Sousa military marches. Charlie Cannon and students from the Rhode Island School of Design's Innovation Studio re-invigorate the ubiquitous newspaper weather map as a call to action on global warming. R. Luke Dubois' Hindsight is Always 20/20 utilizes an eye-chart format that employs words drawn from State of the Union addresses of individual American presidents arranged in order from the most frequently used words descending to the least frequent. Each is meant to illustrate the political imperative of the day. Giving voice to three Japanese citizens who suffered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Krzysztof Wodizcko poignantly examines how a culture of war reverberates intimately across body, time and place.

Expanding into a conceptual dialogue concerning who we are in relation to place, the art collective (spurse) includes Denver in its explorations at this historical time with a suite of graph- like drawings and maps illustrating "entanglements" – sites of ever-evolving cultural and ecological transformations. Lynn Hershman Leeson's body of work scrutinizes and gives voice to the variable permutations of identity. Acclaimed for her pioneering use of technology, the artist's piece entitled Synthia is connected to a live stock market feed where virtual alter egos carry on about their day in a direct relationship to the ups and downs of the stock market. This process is revealed, for example, as "Synthia" goes on a shopping spree when the market is up or visits bears at the zoo when the market is down. DJ Spooky speaks out through his imagined activist political posters with a mission of global environmental respect vs. governmental world authority. The works are in association with the artist's "DIALOG: City" premier of the full-length multimedia performance Terra Nova: The Antarctica Suite, a dramatic visual and acoustic portrait of Antarctica's diminishing icebergs.

Lastly, with two distinctive video works, Daniel Peltz speaks to our shared humanity. For Beepez-le, Peltz uncovers an expression of transcendent Cameroon spirituality interpreted through cell-phone technology. In Peltz's second video, the artist shares a unique expression of political identification in the form of karaoke. The participants are a trio of dedicated Japanese Barack Obama supporters, who are citizens of Obama, Japan, reciting the presidential candidate's speeches. Questioning how we engage one another as citizens within unique cultures and environments, each artist's work ignites a dialog during this politically-charged moment in American culture.

In Part Two of "DIALOG: DENVER," a special Colorado component is a tangential project in response to both the Democratic National Convention in Denver and the Republican National Convention which will be held next month in Minneapolis / St. Paul. In Minneapolis, a political placard design invitational was held in association with the Walker Art Center's "Unconvention / My Yard Our Message" initiative. In Denver, Robischon Gallery selected sixteen Colorado artists, who have a history of addressing political subject matter to contribute a uniquely-themed, original, yard-sign artwork for exhibition. The artwork, reproduced as actual yard signs will travel for exhibition to Minneapolis' "UnConvention," the equivalent of Denver's "Dialog: City." In exchange, sixteen Minneapolis artist's yard signs will be exhibited here in Denver. Covering topics as far ranging as war, wasteful spending, inhumane treatment of animals, universal healthcare and the cultural dissonance Americans experience between their own perceptions of themselves and how others perceive them, the artists pointedly speak up about the issues of the day.