Gallery Reception and Lecture This Friday
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 Exhibition: Walk #1
Dates: August 25-October 23, 2008
Gallery Reception: Friday, October 3, 5-8:30pm, with a lecture by Ernesto Pujol beginning at 7:00pm
Light Work invites you to celebrate our current exhibition, Walk #1, featuring the work of Ernesto Pujol, at a gallery reception this Friday, October 3, from 5-8:30pm. Pujol will be in attendance and will give an artist lecture beginning at 7:00pm.
The black-and-white digital images in this exhibition follow a figure clad in a black robe, Pujol himself, walking through a Civil War cemetery in South Carolina. As Pujol walks, the images develop a dialogue between the figure, nature, and architecture. According to René Paul Barilleaux, "A lush Southern landscape, ornate Victorian cast ironwork, carved marble statuary, and other picturesque elements appear as a counterpoint to the dark, nearly motionless walker."
According to Pujol, he had avoided going to the cemetery for some time, but "When I first set foot in that city of the dead, I suddenly realized that it was the familiar environment I had dreamed about for years. I had experienced recurring dreams of marble arches and colonnades surrounded by gated gardens and water." After beginning to photograph the area in a documentary style, he quickly realized that he needed to walk through the space in a performative way, which resulted in the photographs depicted in this exhibition.
In addition to the images, this exhibition also features the black robe worn by Pujol in the photographs, displayed on a mannequin in the center of the gallery, as well as twelve small, framed, hand-blown glass plates hanging on the wall with the images. Each plate has a word painted on it, meant to evoke a personal or emotional response from the viewers in the gallery.
Pujol grew up in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He received his BA in humanities and painting from the Universidad de Puerto Rico, and his MFA in interdisciplinary art practice from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been exhibited internationally, and he has received numerous awards and fellowships. In addition, Pujol's work is included in various permanent collections, including at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, TX; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University; Casa de las Americas in Havana, Cuba; and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, among many others. He participated in Light Work's Artist-in-Residence program in 1999.
 This event is part of the Visible Memories Conference, which is presented by the Visual Arts and Cultures Cluster of The Central New York Humanities Corridor, made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Corridor is a large-scale partnership with Syracuse University, Cornell University, and the University of Rochester that connects scholarship in five other cluster areas: philosophy, linguistics, religions and cultures, musicology/music history, and humanities as the interface of science/technology. For more conference information visit http://publicmemories.syr.edu.
[Images by Ernesto Pujol]
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