holy holes: absolute stalls

Is a multimedia exhibition curated by Denise Carvalho, exploring different viewpoints on the relationship between religion, power and economics.This show looks at religion from a humorous, poetic and critical perspective, subverting traditional expectations and inviting the viewer to interact, transform, or reflect on the relationship between religious rituals and consumerist everyday practices.

Among the more general ideas gathered in this show is how religious rituals and dogmas
are used to sustain gender and ethnic differences, and to claim absolute power through
propagandistic consumerist strategies. The other end of the spectrum is how believers
react: whether individually or collectively, intimately or overtly, believing or disbelieving, most of us are caught in the web of religious imagining as receptacles of divine inspiration or intervention, or as messengers of absolute power. Another aspect of how believers react is in the flux of social change through language and culture assimilation, there-contextualizing and reshaping of language structures which leads to competing and shifting positions of power. Some dogmatic languages remain untouched, while others result from the mixing of sub-cultural trends into the mainstream via the many cultural industries of a free market society.

In this show, absolute messages are equated with anarchic demonstrations, self-conscious
humor and a bit of deep reflection, bringing the viewer to a contradictory duality of cathartic interaction and religious critique.

Artists: Brent Wahl, Dylan Mortimer, Grady Gerbracht, Hadassa Goldvicht,
Jenny Marketou, Joseph Bennett, Adriana Varella, Angela Freiberger, Gearóid Dolan,
Tobaron Waxman, Kimberly Simpson, Karin Giusti, Marcia X, Meirav Leshem,
Kwabena Slaughter, and Neil Beloufa.
Denise Carvalho is an art critic, curator and independent scholar based in New York City.
[Read full bio here]

Opening Reception: June 14, 2008, 6 – 9 PM
Exhibition: June 14 – August 3, 2008
Hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 12 – 6pm or by appointment
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Dumbo Arts Center is supported in part, by public funds from The New York City
Department of Cultural Affairs and The New York State Council on the Arts. This
organization has received funding from The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, The Greenwich Collection Ltd., The Joan Mitchell Foundation,
The Lily Auchincloss Foundation, The Robert Lehman Foundation, and The Dedalus
Foundation.

DAC’s gallery and office space is generously donated by the Walentas Family and
Two Trees Management LLC. Special thanks to Materials for the Arts for in-kind support.

DAC
Dumbo Arts Center
30 Washington Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
T. 718.694.0831
www.dumboartscenter.org
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