FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 2, 1984
TERRY FOX
CATCH PHRASES
OPENING FEBRUARY 18 through MARCH 17
GALLERY HOURS: TUES-SAT 10-6
TERRY FOX has been involved with performance and installation art since the late 1960's. He is well known for using environments outside of the museum and gallery context such as churches, basements, hillsides and streets. He has done over 70 performances, about half of these in Europe, where he has lived for many years. Since 1975, he has worked with acoustic sound using piano wires or found objects to create a new vocabulary for sound.
Transformations are the basis of Fox's work. Using symbols that are both personal and universal, he has explored energy transformations and transference, sleep and dreaming, levitation and reincarnation in his past works.
CATCH PHRASES
The south gallery contains a series of approximately thirty 3 x 5 feet drawings/constructions from CATCH PHRASES. These mixed media drawings are constructed in three layers. The first layer consists of hand lettered phrases taken from the print media and radio broadcasts, including the Armed Forces European Broadcast Service. A chilling phrase such as"death squad" becomes quite familiar and commonplace when used repeatedly by the news and broadcast services. It neutralizes the horror of reality described and represents, to Fox, an important and dangerous shift in the use of the English language. The phrases which the artist has chosen to reflect, in his view, the degree to which the population passively accepts and absorbs them into everyday life. Such phrases as "balance of terror," "genetic consequences," "irreversible decision," "predelegation of firing authority" or "friendly authoritarian regimes" are examples of everyday coinage in the language of power. Are they euphemisms? Is there a difference between the currently used "mop up operation' and the former "cleansing (of the ghetto)"?
The second layer charted on these drawings, is graffiti each of which Fox observed "written" on the walls of at least two European cities, especially in Italy. The graffiti function as political signs used by the artist in the same way they "defaced" the public walls—as a vital socio-political statement underlying a cultural one. They become "hardened" signs like a hardened shelter or silo—a steel object.
TRIPLEX
The installation TRIPLEX in the north gallery continues the metaphor. It is a two-walled, equilateral triangular room open at the entrance. The walls, painted institutional green, function like two panels in a revolving door if seen from above. TRIPLEX includes an audio work, a red cradle, a black coffin, an over-turned chair and a full scale floorplan/text of the room which serves as an amplifier. Three monkeys sit at the center of this exhibition. "TRIPLEX goes beyond the superficial associations of birth, death, pain, violence, isolation, alienation and boredom that are so integral a part of the life process, guiding us ever so gradually to the center, at which point another dimension opens up." *
Terry Fox has exhibited and performed extensively in Europe and the United States. He has had one man exhibitions at the Kunstmuseum, Lucerne, the Frankfurter Kunstverin, Frankfurt, the Museum Folkwang, Essen. In the United States, he has shown at the University Art Museum, Berkeley, The Museum of Conceptual Art, San Francisco, the Museum of Modern Art and the Kitchen in New York among others. He has collaborated with other artists in performances, including Tom Marioni, Wolf Vostell and Joseph Beuys.
The public is invited to the opening Saturday, February 18th. A reception for the artist will be held from 5 to 7 PM that evening. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 AM to 6 PM. (Monday by appointment only.)
For further information and photographs, please contact Lynn Cassaniti at 212-226-3232.
*Artweek, November 26, 1983, Charles Miedzinski
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