Exhibition examines the power of art and the fragile nature of memory

The Salina Art Center, 242 S. Santa Fe, presents Memory – a jurored exhibition of artists investigating the role of memory in personal identity, and the tensions among memory, truth, and loss. The artists hail from all over the United States as well as three foreign countries. The exhibition will open February 15, 2004 with a celebration beginning at 3:00 p.m. Several of the artists included in the show will be present and will comment on their work. Robert Carl, whose sound installation, Nell Miller, Op. 1, is included in the show, will perform an original composition at 3:15.

Memory is part of The Memory Project, a group of exhibitions, seminars, and films, sponsored by the Salina Art Center. In the call for proposals for this exhibition, community members involved in the Memory Project posed a series of questions to artists:

• What are the tensions between memory and truth?
• What are the tensions between remembering and forgetting?
• How do we proceed individually and culturally when we do not agree upon versions of the truth?
• How do the senses reconstitute and evoke memory?
• Memory is not innocent – to what end do we remember?
• How does intimate memory negotiate, contradict, or complete collective memory?
• How do artists deal with socially coded memory?

Saralyn Reece Hardy, director of the Art Center and curator for Memory, comments about the exhibition: “We invited artists to expand and deepen understandings of the power of art and the fragile nature of memory. Rewarded by 155 proposals, challenges and meditations on the concept of memory, the project became much larger than we expected. In the end, we stopped at nineteen artists. Memory reaches into our questions while serving to indicate the vast amount of creative work currently in process on this subject. We present only some of the possible stories, pictures, rituals, recognitions and records.”

Artists in the exhibition are Jim Campbell, San Francisco, CA; Robert Carl, Hartford CT; Matthew Dehaemers, Leawood, KS; Aaron Fine, Kirksville, MO; John Craig Freeman, Boston, MA; Cathy Lynn Gasser, New York, NY; Larry Gawel, Lincoln, NE; Ronald Gonzalez, Johnson City, NY; Alex Hetherington, Tayport, Scotland; Priya Kambli, Kirksville, MO; Meridith McNeal, Brooklyn, NY; Jessica Maloney, Tucson, AZ; Mary Rose O’Neill, Leicestershire, United Kingdom; Elisabeth Oppenheimer, Zurich, Switzerland; Predrag Pajdic, London, England; Jean Perkins, Chicago, IL; Larry Schwarm, Emporia, KS; Noelle Tan, Occoquan, VA; Virginia Valdes, Sumner, ME.

Memory is on view at the Salina Art Center February 15 through May 16, 2004. Gallery hours are Wed.-Sat. 12-5 p.m., Sun. 1-5 p.m. For more information, call 785-827-1431 or visit www.salinaartcenter.org.