Marilyn Waligore
Post-Convenience
may 25 - July 20, 2019
RO2 ART | Downtown pop-Up
1508 Commerce St. Dallas, TX 75201
May, 2019
Ro2 Art | Dallas, TX |
Dallas, May 2019 - Ro2 Art is proud to present Marilyn Waligore’s solo exhibition featuring new works, Post-Convenience. The show will run from May 25 through July 20, 2019. Waligore’s show will open with an artist reception at Ro2 Art’s Downtown Pop-up located at 1508 Commerce St., Dallas, TX from 7- 10 PM on Saturday, May 25.
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ARTIST STATEMENT
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Post-Convenience offers a reflection on our complicated relationship to consumption. Using aluminum packaging as symbolic of our use of natural resources, the images suggest options for recycling of post-consumer waste. Aluminum forms are reclaimed to create a new sculptural structure, presented in these photographs and videos as an idealized, yet absurd comment on the possibilities for reuse. These photographs document objects collected by the artist during walks in her neighborhood. Aluminum metal endures as a visible emblem of the traces of consumer products that mark the landscape.
Connections between photography and sculpture achieved through temporary arrangements underscore the relationship between the object and its materiality, while commenting on the potential for recycling. These sculptures are bound with tape, which adds tension and foregrounds their temporary state. Their status as a material object in transition is reinforced by the mirrored background, filled with reflections of blurred, liquefied iterations of the objects themselves. The material characteristics of aluminum packaging, which both resists and allows folding and bending, guide the creation of these forms. The emphasis on detail invites visual scrutiny to underscore the potential of the material, which can be recast, transformed into something new. Adoption of a high-resolution medium format digital back on a view camera and studio lighting parallels approaches found in product photography, with an emphasis on description, on rendering the object as something unique, to be desired and valued. According to scholar Mimi Sheller, our drive for speed, exemplified by aluminum metal, prompts our lack of awareness of the resulting costs, such as the energy resources required for the production of aluminum from bauxite ore, and the negative effects on the environment. Sheller discusses this lightweight, malleable metal in Aluminum Dreams: The Making of Light Modernity, where she notes its centrality to our lives, as well as the anticipated rise in consumption rates. Post-Convenience encourages an embrace of the potential actions of reuse, recycle, and conserve, while fostering reconsideration of our daily habits, and their eventual global impact. |
ABOUT THE ARTIST
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Marilyn Waligore is Professor of Aesthetic Studies / Photography at the University of Texas at Dallas, where she directs the photography program. Waligore received an MFA degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and undergraduate degrees in Art and in English from the University of California-Berkeley.
Her photographs and online media projects have been exhibited widely, including Hong Kong, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Thailand, and venues such as SIGGRAPH, Los Angeles, California, the New York Digital Salon, School of Visual Arts, NYC, Center for Photography at Woodstock, New York, the Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Houston Center for Photography, Houston, Texas, the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Los Angeles, California, the Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio, Artspace 111 Gallery, Fort Worth, Texas, R02 Gallery, Dallas, Texas, and in Austin, Texas at the Laguna Gloria Art Museum, Women & Their Work, and in the Texas Biennial, at the Mexican American Cultural Center. Her articles on photography have appeared in Leonardo and Photography Quarterly, and she has curated numerous group exhibitions. She is a recipient of grants and awards, including an Artist Fellowship in Visual Arts from the Ohio Arts Council, the Arts Midwest/ National Endowment of the Arts Regional Visual Arts Fellowship in Photography, and the Moss/Chumley North Texas Artist Award in Photography and New Genres. Her work is included in museum collections such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. |