Queens Museum, Queens
Oct 23 2019-Feb 16 2020
The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
(CAMH) is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition Nicolas Moufarrege:
Recognize My Sign. During a career that lasted just over a decade, Nicolas
Moufarrege (1947-1985) created an original and idiosyncratic body of
embroidered paintings. Nicolas Moufarrege: Recognize My Sign—the artist’s first
solo museum exhibition—traces the development of his work from the lap-scaled
portrait-tapestries he produced in Beirut, Lebanon in the early-1970s to the
final works he created in New York City, New York in 1985. This exhibition is
organized by CAMH Curator Dean Daderko. The Museum will host a public opening
reception on the evening of Friday, November 9, 2018 from 6:30–9 PM. The
exhibition will be on view through February 17, 2019. As always, admission to
CAMH is free.
A dedicated appropriator, Moufarrege
culled images from a broad and vast sourcebook; his embroidered paintings mix
references from Classical sculptures and Baroque paintings with comic book
heroes, Islamic tilework designs, Pop Art, and Arabic calligraphy. He borrowed
images from paintings and prints by artists such as Katsushika Hokusai, Edvard
Munch, Pablo Picasso, and especially Roy Lichtenstein. If appropriation
provided the artist with raw subject matter, it is his pointed juxtapositions
of images that most clearly reveal Moufarrege’s wit and thoughtful
intelligence: his stitched paintings tell stories.
The artist’s move to New York City
in 1981 initiated yet another sea change in his approach to imagery and
composition, coinciding, as it did, with the advent of postmodern tactics of
appropriation. Where his earlier works referenced figures borrowed from Baroque
prints and paintings by Guido Reni or Peter Paul Rubens, Moufarrege’s New York
paintings juxtapose images with a more sharply critical and humorous eye. In
one iconic work, Title unknown, (1984), a stylized wave adopted from a
woodblock print by Hokusai is positioned in the upper left corner of a painted
embroidery canvas, and Moufarrege copies an image of a Lichtenstein painting
into the bottom right corner of the same canvas. The portrait of a heroine
sinking into deep waters includes a thought bubble announcing, “I don’t care!
I’d rather sink–than call Brad for help!” In Moufarrege’s juxtaposition of the
two images, the wave appears perpetually ready to swamp the already drowning
woman. The Truth About John the Baptist (1983) is a pastiche of embroidered
images: the comic book characters Silver Surfer and The Thing bookend a
depiction of Moses in the bulrushes; floating atop the scene, the statement “My
father taught me Arabic calligraphy” is rendered in calligraphic flourishes.
Eschewing binaries like East and West, fictional and real, and by establishing
temporal connections between history and the present, Moufarrege posits new
ways to connect with and approach narrative storytelling. He does so as a
knowing provocateur, with a wink and a smile, offering us new ways to address
images, situations, and layered identity.
Details
Event website: http://www.queensmuseum.org
Venue name: Queens Museum
Address:Flushing Meadows–Corona Park,
Queens, 11368
Transport: Subway: 7 to Mets–Willets
Pt
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