The Three Traumas
Curated by Jorge Alberto Perez
Featuring:
Anne Berry
Teresa LoJacono
R. Hardwick Weston
Opening Reception: March 5th | 6-8 pm
Exhibition: March 5 – 28, 2015
Baxter St at CCNY presents The Three Traumas a group show curated by Jorge Alberto Perez presenting works by Anne Berry, Teresa LoJacono, and R. Hardwick Weston. In Specters of Marx, Jacques Derrida returns to Freud’s concept of the three traumas inflicted on human narcissism that continue to haunt modern subjectivity, the three intellectual revolutions that have de-centered the ego: the cosmological trauma (the Copernican subject no longer stands at the center of the universe; the biological trauma (the Darwinian subject is no longer at the apex of evolution); and the psychological trauma (the Freudian subject possesses an unconscious and is no longer master even of himself). For Derrida, Marxism not only completes the dismantling of anthropocentrism, but combines all three traumas to deal a final blow to human narcissism. The specter of the three traumas haunts the work of the three artists presented in the show, each of which reflects one or more of the narcissistic wounds that decenter modern subjectivity.
COPERNICUS // R. Hardwick Weston – Photography, Collage
Hardwick Weston’s work is an accumulation of fragmented gestures that by its form questions our capacity to fully comprehend the origin myths of Judao-Christian belief systems while simultaneously placing the viewer in a position of observing a celestial event. Working from his own photography Weston layers his large mandala-like works as ebullient emanations from a central source that is both grounded, literally, in the Holy Land and in the Bataillan notion of general economy. The work duplicates and replicates itself to grow within the restricted economy of belief, but ends up becoming a glowing emanation of light in its own halo like the sun we once thought encircled us.
DARWIN // Anne Berry – Photography
Though shown in surroundings that suggest restriction and captivity, the representation of our Simian cousins in Anne Berry’s portraits of primates do not suggest their plight as ‘other’ but quite startlingly intimate a complex inner life similar to our own. With a range of expressions that begin with the glint of an intelligent soul behind the eyes, it is not too far a leap to empathize with what appears to be longing, curiosity, sadness, defiance, loneliness…
FREUD // Teresa LoJacono – Photography
Teresa LoJacono’s images have a casual intimacy about them with a counter weight of psychological content. Each image hints at a confessional moment captured in the quiet solitude of the artist’s mind. Often turning the camera on herself the sense of loss is palpable – loss of youth, loss of loved ones, loss of connection to the broader world… Her images indicate both an ongoing questioning of self but simultaneously the self’s undoing. This de-centered position from which LoJacono draws inspiration generates images that appear like scenes in a dream, documented with a degree of emotional detachment.
Bios:
Anne Berry is a photographic artist from Atlanta, Georgia. She attended Sweet Briar College (BA) and the University of Georgia (MA). Anne’s continuing long-term project, Behind Glass, depicts primates in captivity, but the photographs are not about the environment but about the essence of the animals. Anne believes that photography contains the power to evoke empathy and that caring motivates action. Her work is currently featured in Photoworld of China and has also been published in F-Stop Magazine, Slate Magazine/Behold, Shots Magazine, Photo District News, The Portfolio Review, CNN Photos, and Black + White. Anne is a PhotoLucida Critical Mass 2012 and 2013 Top 50 and a 2014 Clarence John Laughlin Award finalist and Honorable Mention. She is represented by the Catherine Couturier Gallery in Houston. AnneBerryStudio.com
Teresa Lojacono was born and raised on the central coast of California and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is an artist who works in photography and sculpture. She holds a BFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and an MFA from Bard College/International Center of Photography. Her photography career began in the silence of the darkroom, but later shifted under the influence of critical theory to combine the traditional practice of documentary photography with the impulsive reflections of ordinary experiences. Lojacono has exhibited widely in California and New York. TeresaLojacono.com
R. Hardwick Weston is an image-based artist/scholar whose work combines photography, collage and experimental criticism. In his work he explores the principle of “visual criticism” that Walter Benjamin called Bilderkritik or “criticism through images.” His work has appeared in Social Text, Rethinking Marxism, Convolution, and at the Guggenheim Museum’s “24-Hour Program on the Concept of Time” (2009). From 2009 to 2011, Hardwick Weston lived and worked in Ramallah, Palestine, where he served as the Associate Dean of the Al-Quds Bard College of Liberal Arts and Sciences where this project had its genesis. Hardwick Weston holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University and serves on the faculty at Bard College where he teaches philosophy, theory, and human rights. RHardwickWeston.wix.com/RHardwickWeston.
Jorge Alberto Perez is a Cuban-born artist, curator and writer and graduate of the Bard College/International Center of Photography MFA program in New York City where he was a Director’s Scholarship Fellow in 2011. Perez works in photography, collage, installation and writing. In 2013 Perez curated three contemporary art exhibits for Brutedge Gallery at Mana Contemporary in Jersey CIty. He is a contributing writer for ARC Magazine and DK Publishing – his own work was featured in the London publication Ventana Latina Magazine in 2014. JorgeAlbertoPerez.com
The exhibition is part of a series of guest-curated exhibitions at Baxter St at CCNY resulting from an open call for proposals, and is made possible in part by generous support from public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
