Andrea Dezso exhibition opens
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
258 Main Street
Ridgefield, CT 06854
www.aldrichart.org
The Transylvania-born artist’s site-specific exhibition at The Aldrich showcases her skill in traditional, labor intensive, hand-crafted book-making, and will take the form of a diorama, in which a series of cut-out panels will reveal layers of a hallucinatory narrative featuring fantasy worlds and idiosyncratic characters.
Dezsö presents a powerful journey to the interior of the psyche through giant multimedia tunnel books, visible through the windows of the Museum’s historic 1783 administration building on Main Street.
Aldrich curator Mónica Ramírez-Montagut explains, “Dezsö was inspired by Connecticut’s haunted places and their stories; her exhibition will feature strange child-like creatures that populate the bizarre environment of her installation.”
The somewhat surreal setting will present motifs from nature, such as spider webs and creeper plants, which convey a certain level of mystery and danger. These motifs will extend into the building’s architecture, where the artist has created new Victorian-like fretwork for the porch (corbels, gable decorations, and column brackets), with ornaments that are “deadly” beautiful and irresistible.
As Dezsö points out, “It opens on Halloween night, my favorite holiday, because that is the time when we can trespass across the barrier between the world of the living and the world of the dead.”
The Aldrich will celebrate the opening of Andrea Dezsö: Haunted Ridgefield on Monday, October 31, 2011, from 4 to 8 pm. Treats will be handed out on the front porch of the Museum for those who dare to venture out this night.
The Aldrich is supported, in part, by the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services. The official media sponsors of exhibition openings are Ridgefield Magazine and WSHU Public Radio.
Artist
Dezsö is Assistant Professor of Art at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA. She was full time faculty at Parsons School of Design in New York for nearly a decade and has also taught at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, City College in New York, the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest, Hungary, and lectured extensively nationally and internationally. Her work has been shown at the Museum of Arts & Design and the Jack Tilton Gallery, New York; Rice Gallery, Houston; The Fujikawa Kirie Art Museum, Japan; The Cheongjou Craft Biennale, South Korea; and reviewed in ARTFORUM, ARTnews, The New York Times, The Village Voice, Wall Street Journal, NPR, New York magazine, Print, Fiber Arts and Hand/Eye. Her writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, Print, Blab and Esopus. Community Garden, Dezsö’s large-scale public mosaic installed in the New York City subway, was awarded Best American Public Art in 2007 by Americans for the Arts. Her second project for the NYC subway, a 48-panel stainless steel work, will be installed in late 2011. Andrea Dezsö is represented by Frey Norris Contemporary & Modern, San Francisco.
Museum
The Aldrich is one of the few independent, non-collecting contemporary art museums in the United States, and the only museum in Connecticut devoted to contemporary art. Founded on Ridgefield’s historic Main Street in 1964, the Museum concentrates its exhibition program on solo exhibitions by emerging and mid-career artists, complemented by acclaimed gallery-based education programs that use the work on view to help adults, families, and over 7,000 students annually to connect to our world through contemporary art. The Museum is located at 258 Main Street, Ridgefield, CT 06877. All exhibitions and programs are handicapped accessible. Free on-site parking. Regular Museum hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 12 noon to 5 pm. For more information call 203.438.4519.
Contact
Pamela Ruggio
203.438.4519
pruggio@aldrichart.org
