Sandow Birk, Al Farrow, James Pollack at Catharine Clark Gallery May 28, 2011

Now through May 28, 2011; Tuesday - Saturday, 11am - 6:00pm

Catharine Clark Gallery presents two solo exhibitions: "American Qur'an" by Sandow Birk and "Reliquaries" by Al Farrow. An interactive video by James Pollack is in the Media Room. The compelling pairing of exhibitions is on view through May 28, 2011.

In Sandow Birk's continuation of "American Qur'an"--his ongoing project to hand-transcribe and illuminate the Qur'an with scenes from contemporary American life--the artist presents his newest works on paper as well as collaborative ceramic works with Elyse Pignolet. Concerned with the growing American preoccupation with, and often vilification of, Islam, his objective for the series was to better understand the complexities of Islamic scripture while revealing it as relevant to daily American life. Birk's panels are not literal, but personal reflections on the messages in the Qur'an and reveal the similarities to other religious texts. This is his fourth installment of the series, which has garnered significant critical attention in media such as The New York Times, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and The CNN Wire. The entire project--all 114 suras of the Qur'an, consisting of 300 illuminated 16x24-inch pages rendered in ink, gouache, and metallic paint--will take two more years to complete.

Shown concurrently is "Reliquaries," a solo exhibition by sculptor Al Farrow of religious architecture, reliquaries, and religious ritual objects all rendered with munitions. Farrow's exquisite craftsmanship and unsettling juxtaposition of content--symbolic religious structures with weaponry and history-laden found object--is both visually stunning and emotionally confounding. His broad selection of religious sanctuaries resists a critique of any one specific belief system, but rather pointedly engages organized religion as a whole to provoke questions about the aestheticism of violence, the relationship between organized religion and war, the repetition of history, and the evolution of battle.

Official Website: http://www.cclarkgallery.com/dynamic/exhibit.asp