O'Born Contemporary

Exhibition

Romanticism Now

Third Annual Emergent Artists Exhibition

January 11 – January 25, 2014

Opening Reception: Saturday, January 11, 2 – 5 PM

Listing.pdf

artists

Layne Hinton
Parker Kay
Stu Monck
Ryan Walker
Ian Willms

statement

Anachronisms are ubiquitous in contemporary society-vintage goods are in high demand, musical trends support the recirculation of old bands that are then re-cast into history's pool of dismissed creative out-put, and, though never identical in aesthetic, Avant Garde art movements emerge at least once per decade, placing the tenets of Dada in the context of Fluxus, and those of Fluxus in the context of today's Anti-art progenitors.

Remarkably, the political disruption and technological race occupying the world's attention in our current state has disguised the resurfacing of another artistic movement - one that is so philosophically and intellectually subtle, it might go unnoticed. Romanticism in the 21st century has emerged not only in reaction to the technological revolution, but further, due to a need for wonder in the stark light of today's political realities. Do symbolic and, further, geographically symbolic, narratives still have relevance within secular discourses today? Perhaps because technological advancement has caught up with our own imaginings of the virtual, art has returned to ruminating on antique subjects such as physical endurance; the crossover between histories and geographies; melancholy and the solitary; the terror of the sublime, and Arcadian landscapes.

@ Parker Kay, Data Portrait 6 (video still), 2013