‘Master/Slave’ (2013) canvas, blood, wax, thread, graphite, wood from David Dixon’s “DIXIE”
Cathouse FUNeral ‘s NC-raised founder David Dixon focuses on race relations in the U.S. South with his current solo exhibit, “ DIXIE ,” featuring altered Confederate flags batiked with blood.
From a press release:
DIXIE confronts the South’s history of slavery, exploited labor and fraught racial relations, specifically the struggle for emancipation in the post-Civil War Reconstruction period. Drawing from both African Kongo and European Enlightenment systems of thought, the show’s centerpiece, Master/Slave, is a tight grid of twelve stretched canvases representing Confederate flags that are “batiked with blood” and have been roughly sawed in half, the “X” of the “Southern Cross” (a negation) flipped around and reformed into an open lozenge shape. Installed adjacent to Master/Slave is The Clansman, a large free-standing fresco that is awash with swirling stains of blood and affixed with a rusted metal halo.
‘Prayer Meeting’ (2015) blood and bleach on canvas from David Dixon’s “DIXIE”
Acknowledging multi-authorship as a fact of artistic production, Dixon in DIXIE expands notions of identity to include others, both fictional and real. The large triptych, The Dao de Dixie, is signed by a character, “George”, from an upcoming film by Dixon, and is dated “1986”; several pieces in DIXIE were conceived from George’s point of view. Other works have Dixon commissioning 19th century American Romantic landscape paintings from an on-line Fine Art distributor that uses cheap Chinese labor to execute skilled, kitsch copies of, for this exhibition, Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Edwin Church and William Trost Richards. One of these canvases is signed with the number: LA2988RCH-40.
In light of multiple national news stories that demonstrate America’s racist past is not past, we do not presume that Cathouse FUNeral or Dixon’s work in particular is the place to resolve these issues, but we are doing what we can…
“DIXIE” will be on display through September 6th, with a screening and discussion of D.W. Griffith ‘s infamous film about the Reconstruction era, The Birth of a Nation on September 2nd. See what David Dixon had to say about the film accompanying “DIXIE” here .
When
Now through Sunday, September 6, 2015
Gallery Hours: Saturdays and Sundays 12:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Film Screening: Wednesday, September 2, 2015 @ 7:30 pm
Where
Cathouse FUNeral
260 Richardson Street
Brooklyn, NY 11222
646-729-4682
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