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Light Reign, James Turrell SkyspaceEllen Gallagher: Preserve/Murmur
East Gallery
January 17, 2004 – April 18, 2004
“Preserve/Murmur” comprised three distinct bodies of work that the artist Ellen Gallagher called drawings, although they incorporate sculptural elements, 16mm film and projectors, Wite-Out, plasticine, pomade, and stick-on toys, along with more conventional media. Works represented included “Murmur” (2003), a set of five animated films; the “Watery Ecstatic” series (2002-2004), comprised of images literally carved into thick watercolor paper; and a group of 20 works on paper entitled “Preserve,” in which Gallagher altered wig advertisements from Ebony, Black Digest, and other mid-century African-American magazines in order to highlight the covert racism that fueled the era’s market for products like wigs and skin lighteners.
From the moment of her highly public debut-at the Whitney Biennial of 1995-Ellen Gallagher pushed the edges of pictorial art, both formally and thematically. In her recent work she continues to confront issues of racial identity in a lyrically aesthetic way, transforming racist imagery by multiplication and disjunction into elegant abstract elements.