SKYLAR FEIN

2 October 2019 (New Orleans, LA) JONATHAN FERRARA GALLERY is proud to announce, Two Thousand Words For Students, Artists, Workers, Owners, and Everybody, an exhibition of the latest two- and three-dimensional work by New Orleans-based artist Skylar Fein. Underlying this particular body of work is a pronounced and thought-provoking critique of global political and religious institutions that have shaped our nations’ framework and continue to influence policy makers. Stylistically, this exhibition maintains Fein’s trademark combination of Pop sensibility and political conscience. A theme that emerges in this body of work, and which has remained constant throughout Fein’s career, is a tribute to various forms of nonviolent resistance. The exhibition will be on view from 2 October through 25 October 2019 with an opening reception coinciding with the Arts District of New Orleans’ (ADNO) First Saturday Gallery Openings on Saturday, 5 October from 6-9 pm.

"Everything calls out to us, clamoring to be totally transformed, but everyone pretends not to notice" --and here it is, the clamor.

This is a show about words, and the pieces talk to each other, talk over each other, and joke with each other. Mostly they get along.

The quote above--"Everything calls out to us"--is from Franklin Rosemont, the Chicago Surrealist, and he makes a few appearances, especially in the large grey flag. Roy Cohn, architect of the Red Scare and a lifelong enemy of gay rights, shows up twice. ("Admit nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations!" was Cohn's summation of his own legal strategy.) Maurice Blanchot, an obscure French philosopher who devoted his life to unpopular causes, can be found here and there. Blanchot's best work must be "The Refusal," a short essay about a citizen's duty to disobey its own government, and excerpts from that essay appear in the piece "The Red Sentences."

A little bit about Blanchot: in Nazi-occupied France, he was stood up against a wall by the Gestapo and readied for execution. He made a daring escape, and from that moment on, Blanchot--a right-winger and occasional anti-Semite--became a champion of the marginal, the persecuted, the dispossessed. Politically he was on the right, then on the left, then on the right again, sometimes a communist, always an antifascist. In Blanchot I see a model free thinker, unafraid, unconcerned with popularity, devoted to moral force alone. He seems to embody the spirit of the early-Twentieth Century working-class intellectual, an ideological combatant who could refine his ideas continuously, who wasn't afraid to be wrong, and above all, who wasn't a believer but a seeker. I see myself in him--or want to. Where is Blanchot today? Who are his heirs? The future belongs to those who can hold two contradictory ideas in their heads at the same time.

SKYLAR FEIN was born in Greenwich Village and raised in the Bronx. He has had many careers including teaching nonviolent resistance under the umbrella of the Quakers, working for a gay film festival in Seattle, stringing for The New York Times and as pre-med student at University of New Orleans where he moved one week before Hurricane Katrina hit.

In the wreckage of New Orleans, Fein found his new calling as an artist, experimenting with color and composition of the detritus of Katrina. His work soon became known for its pop sensibility as well as its hard-nosed politics. After a few starring roles in group shows, he had his first solo show in May 2008 at Jonathan Ferrara Gallery in New Orleans.