Reception Friday, May 21, 7-10 PM
Hours for the exhibition:
Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday 12-6 PM
May 21 - June 21

Roebling Hall is extremely pleased to present ?Monuments? for D. Flavin by Iván Navarro.

Appropriating the signature materials associated with Dan Flavin, Navarro builds visually dynamic, radiant structures such as tables and chairs with fluorescent lights. In a nod to his precursor, Navarro titles this exhibition ?Monuments? for D. Flavin, after the late artist?s seminal ?Monuments? to V. Tatlin (1964-1990), itself an homage to another precursor. In contrast to Flavin, Navarro?s interests reach beyond the minimalist tenets of formal and material concerns, engaging the perception of the viewer and revealing social and political content behind the misleadingly neutral veneer of formalism.

As Navarro states in his remarks on the ?Monuments,? also a modified appropriation of remarks by Flavin made in 1965:

Thus far, I have made a considered attempt to poise hot and silent electric light in crucial concert point to point, line by line and otherwise in the box that is a room within the viewers that interact with it. This dramatic decoration has been founded in the young tradition of a plastic revolution which gripped American art only forty years ago. My joy is to try to build from that incomplete experience.

Navarro plays with both the immediate seduction of formalism and the underlying issues it tends to obscure. Joy Division (2004)?a seductively formal red structure of burning red fluorescents topped with glass, named after Nazi concentration camp brothels?is immediately recognizable as a table of minimalist design, but only after further contemplation does one notice the support structure takes the haunting shape of a swastika. Homeless Lamp (2004), a fluorescent supermarket shopping cart, at first seems to be a witty Pop Art reference, but the title reveals different connotations for that object. This work and others such as Blue Electric Chair (2004) incite an underlying sense of fear and apprehension that lingers beneath the clean lines and radiant glow of the fluorescent bulbs.

Iván Navarro has exhibited in, among other venues, Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, Santiago (Chile), National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Hartell Gallery, Cornell University (New York), Gasworks studios, London (UK), Museo de Arte Moderno de Guadalajara (Mexico), Museo Nacional de Arte, Lima (Perú), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago (Chile). Current and upcoming projects include: ?Terrorvision? at Exit Art (New York), La Biennale Adriatica di Arti Nuove (Italy), a project room at the Jersey City Museum (New Jersey), Asosiassione Prometeo (Italy), and ?Departures from Common Things: Emerging Paths, Chile?, Las Ataranzas, Valencia (Spain).

Adriana Arenas - Erik Benson - Jane Benson - Sebastiaan Bremer - Paul Campbell - Christoph Draeger

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