Opening Saturday April 9, 6 – 9 pm
exhibition dates: April 9 – May 8
The Good Children Gallery is pleased to announce the first New Orleans solo show by Lala Rascic, featuring new installation work.
The artist will give a lecture-performance April 16 at 5 PM, Oral Traditons and Narrative Performance, talking about oral epic traditions of the Balkans in reference to her own artisitc practice.
The Good Children Gallery
4037 St. Claude Ave., New Orleans, LA 70117
Exibition Dates: April 9 – May 8
www.goodchildren.com
While Japan was facing an environmental and nuclear disaster the final phases of the new exhibition …brighter that a thousand suns… by Lala Rascic were taking place. Curiously, “environmental” and “nuclear” came hand in hand with the word “disaster”, conveniently setting the stage and context for this exhibition whose keywords are nuclear – environmental – disaster.
Quoting the Bhagavad Gita, Robert Oppenheimer described his experience of the first nuclear test Trinity as “…brighter than a thousand suns…” This became the title of a book by German author Robert Jungk, chronicling the discovery of nuclear energy and consequently, the atom bomb.
In this exhibition inspired by the Jungk book wall painting, video and light combine into a site – specific ambient installation. The book is only a departure point, the titles of the chapters are de-contextualized and re-considered, it’s form appropriated, the meanings altered and changed, giving way to a new narrative.
The artist does not offer optimism but rather poses the question: how can the past inform the present, how does an antiquated idea of a fall-out shelter resonate in today’s unstable world faced with an un-articulated yet omnipresent threat of man-made or environmental disaster that can strike any time, any place? The motif of the flash, a burst of light is repeatedly portrayed, alluding to the instant that the catastrophe strikes, the shake, the lightning bolt, the precise moment when the concrete gives, pillars topple, the levee breaks, when particles or objects collide.
Lala Raščić 