WHO: Alexandra Grant
WHAT: 'Bodies'
WHEN: September 18 - October 23, 2010; Opening Reception September 23, 2010
WHERE: Honor Fraser
2622 La Cienega Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90034
WHY:
With Bodies Grant presents a new series of paintings using a cycle of poetry by her long-term collaborator Michael Joyce. The poems that Joyce specifically wrote for this series of paintings are in the form of what is called 'haiga'. These texts serve as a starting point for each composition as Grant maps out the experience of the physical and intellectual body in oil on canvas and linen. Capturing the themes of Joyce's original texts: romantic love and longing, creation myths, the loss of self in relation to the other, and interrogating the idea of how the feminine body is represented, Grant pushes her conceptual language of text, often in multiple languages. Bodies reveals both maps of the experience of the feminine body - a woman painter painting the physical body - but also of the exchange and relationship of an artist with her muses (poetic language, and in this case, the male writer).
The paintings in the body series are based on a haiku cycle written by Michael Joyce:
Lost Hills Hokku
this
smoke
and
the hills
at dusk
the
symmetry
of
thigh
ivory
moon
(From: Honor Fraser Gallery)
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