Farideh Sakhaeifar
War Stories brings together an impressive and diverse group of artists, whose work focuses primarily on war and conflict. The exhibition features Steve Mumford's documentary watercolors from Iraq and Afghanistan, cast Taliban bullet holes by Piers Secunda, video work of Desert Storm by Nin Brudermann, Farideh Sakhaiefar's collection of smuggled U.S Army war objects to Iran, photography by Trevor Paglen, terrorist bomb sculptures by Gregory Green, andAlfredo Martinez's firearms drawings alongside a video interview by Mika Mattila.
With most of the world hooked into 24-hour a day news cycles, curator and art critic Anthony Haden-Guest has assembled a show reflective of the ubiquity of war in our global society.
With most of the world hooked into 24-hour a day news cycles, curator and art critic Anthony Haden-Guest has assembled a show reflective of the ubiquity of war in our global society.
Anthony Haden-Guest writes:
This is the landscape the artists in War Stories inhabit. Nin Brudermann, Gregory Green, Alfredo Martinez, Steve Mumford, Trevor Paglen, Farideh Sakhaiefar and Piers Secunda are wholly dissimilar in a number of ways. They do not constitute a movement, a "school". What they share is a sensibility. Like the Pop artists - another non-School - they see that there are new elements in the world around them. And that this is what they need to work with.
As for the rest of us, well, we are pretty good at numbing out. Climate change? Turn the page! But making people take a good look is part of an artist's job description. It's what these artists are doing here and what they are showing us is the world we are living in now.