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"The Precious Stone & Gold Factory"
February 9 - March 11, 2002
at Roebling Hall
For Immediate Release
Roebling Hall is extremely pleased to announce its first gallery exhibition of the poetic video, installation and print work of ADRIANA ARENAS. Allusively titled "The Precious Stone and Gold Factory," Arenas' brand new multimedia work creates a transformative space for individual and collective reflection through her highly ideosyncratic combination of Latin popular music, moving and still digital imagery, video and self-invented myth.
Employing humor and elements of kitsch, such as popular music from her native Colombia to startingly moving effect, Adriana Arenas has explored the themes of romantic love, race, politics and colonialism in previous large-scale installations, punctuating these with a deep sense of nostalgia as well as a continuing fascination with the difficulties of cultural translation.
Featuring a complex, seemingly incredible backstory that recalls the imaginative flights of of fancy of certain primitive artists, Arenas' newest work establishes a dramatic tension between two fictional characters, "Mr. Fixation Deluxe" and Ms. Nature," the principal fictional sources from which"The Precious Stone and Gold Factory" flows.
An archetypal story of love, loss and misdirection told chiefly through a single large video projection, a "talking" TV monitor and five discrete 4 x 5" "moving paintings," Adriana Arenas' "The Precious Stone and Gold Factory" spins its ambiguous but captivating tale by means of sensous, entrancing rhythms and images. The resuting installation-part high-concept soap-opera
romance, part Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds-alchemically transforms the work's base emotions into the gold and precious gems of an edlessly looping and atmospheric beauty.
For the full story go to The Precious Stone and Gold Factory script created by El Parche in Bogota.
Born in Pereira, Colombia, Adriana Arenas has exhibited in, among other venues, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Contemporary Arts Center, Cinicinnati, The Museo de Arte Reina Sofia, OpenSpace (Milan) and Palazzo Tupputti. "The Precious Stone and Gold Factory" will open March 7, 2002, at the Rice University Art Gallery, Houston, Texas, and is currently on view at El Parche in Bogota, Colombia and will also be presented at Artcite/MediaCity in Windsor, Canada.
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