Untitled Document

IMAGES

ALPHA AND OMEGA: New works on paper by Graham Day Guerra
Opening: Thursday, 21st of August 7-10
Open by Appointment: Monday 25th - 29th August

Press Release:

Wardlow gallery is pleased to present the premier of Graham Day Guerra’s new series of large works on paper: Alpha and Omgea. All works from this series were created during Graham’s residency this year at Wardlow.
Graham uses a host of progressive photographic and 3D rendering technologies to create models for a puerile Eden, where the resident hothouse mutant humans topiaries are anthropomorphic manifestations of mass-produced pleasures and prosaic consumer culture. The resulting “renders” are the basis for the large-scale charcoal and graphite drawings that compose Graham’s Wardlow premier.
Graham’s love of historic painting, specifically both the violent and the ecstatic depictions of the human body in Catholic art, is the inspiration for many of the Alpha and Omega images. But, unlike the rapturous Assumption of the Virgin by Poussin and Tiepolo, Graham’s “virgin” clones are not ascending to a theistic heaven. They rise skyward buoyed by our collective contemporary pining for a purely artificial and profane human perfection. Graham aspires to give secular, materialistic, silicon and steroid enhanced modern bodies a place in the pantheon of exalted art.
Graham is currently an international resident at Wardlow. He is represented by galleries in New York City, Houston Texas, and Europe. Graham attended graduated school for painting at Yale School of Art in New Haven Connecticut and he apprenticed under artists Matthew Barney and Tom Sachs. Graham currently lives in Brooklyn New York and is a faculty member at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn New York and Rhode Island School of Design in Providence Rhode Island.

Brodie Higgs
Director
Wardlow Residency

Wardlow Art Residence is a live-in, studio and gallery warehouse for international and Australian artists. Local and international artists are sponsored from an open call to live in Fitzroy, Melbourne, utilizing their own studio and gallery. Wardlow hosts 4 shows and 4 open studios a year in which the gallery is open to the public.