SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING
Theodore A. Harris: SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING series
St. Peter's Basilica
Vatican City, Rome, Italy
Curated By Pope Francis
Opening Reception: Easter Sunday, April 12, 2020
Closing Reception: Christmas Day, Friday, December 25, 2020
Artist's lecture and conversation with the curator
Red wine and light refreshments will be served
Monday, April 13, 2020, 5 p.m.
(This exhibition was to travel to the Notre Dame Cathedral; the Notre Dame display has been canceled until further notice.)
St. Peter's Basilica
Vatican City, Rome, Italy
Curated By Pope Francis
Opening Reception: Easter Sunday, April 12, 2020
Closing Reception: Christmas Day, Friday, December 25, 2020
Artist's lecture and conversation with the curator
Red wine and light refreshments will be served
Monday, April 13, 2020, 5 p.m.
(This exhibition was to travel to the Notre Dame Cathedral; the Notre Dame display has been canceled until further notice.)
* "Vanilla Nightmares" is a reference to the Vanilla Nightmares series begun in 1986 by artist and philosopher Adrian Piper. Check out the Hammer Museum and the Adrian Piper Research Archive websites for more information.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Press Release Manifesto
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: VATICAN CITY--We are pleased to announce SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING series, a solo exhibition by Theodore A. Harris, visual artist and poet based in Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.A. This will be the first exhibition of Harris's work in Rome, Italy. Curated by Pope Francis, the exhibition's Opening Reception takes place at 5 p.m. on Easter Sunday, April 22, 2020, celebrated with an artist's lecture and conversation with the curator. Red wine and light refreshments will be served. The Closing Reception is Christmas Day, Friday, December 25, 2020.
Because Harris’s work deals with the intersection of art and politics, His current series, SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING, is an attempt to make poetry out of art speak. These text-based works appropriate the officialness of the government's language to caution the public about the hazards of smoking on cigarette packaging, by placing the text in a minimalist rectangle.
The SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING series wants to remind art criticism and art history of the social ills you can hear outside the stained-glass window of the white cube, which under a black light, would show in glowing evidence, the fingerprints of the colonist and the bloodstains of the dis - membered made into souvenirs. Each work is a suturing, toward healing our pockmarked history, in a war that reads like a map of wounds.
"Stop and Frisk" art critics, such as Lawrence Alloway, Clement Greenberg, Hilton Kramer, and Ken Johnson, use their pens like tiki-torch terrorists, who mistake their aesthetic judgment for an embassy on foreign soil where they can find safety from critical art and burn down everything that is critical of formalism.
The SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING series is in the tradition of artists' works such as Hans Haacke’s Helmsboro Country (1990), Adrian Piper’s Ashes to Ashes (1995), and Maurizio Cattelan's La Nona Ora (1990).
Because Harris’s work deals with the intersection of art and politics, His current series, SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING, is an attempt to make poetry out of art speak. These text-based works appropriate the officialness of the government's language to caution the public about the hazards of smoking on cigarette packaging, by placing the text in a minimalist rectangle.
The SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING series wants to remind art criticism and art history of the social ills you can hear outside the stained-glass window of the white cube, which under a black light, would show in glowing evidence, the fingerprints of the colonist and the bloodstains of the dis - membered made into souvenirs. Each work is a suturing, toward healing our pockmarked history, in a war that reads like a map of wounds.
"Stop and Frisk" art critics, such as Lawrence Alloway, Clement Greenberg, Hilton Kramer, and Ken Johnson, use their pens like tiki-torch terrorists, who mistake their aesthetic judgment for an embassy on foreign soil where they can find safety from critical art and burn down everything that is critical of formalism.
The SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING series is in the tradition of artists' works such as Hans Haacke’s Helmsboro Country (1990), Adrian Piper’s Ashes to Ashes (1995), and Maurizio Cattelan's La Nona Ora (1990).
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