For Immediate Release:

"AMERICAN MADE/MADE IN AMERICA"

Painting by Ricardo Francis
Sculpture by David C. Terry

October 30 - December 14
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 30th, 6 - 9pm

Anthem Gallery presents "American Made/Made in America" an exhibition of painting and sculpture by Ricardo Francis and David C. Terry.

What is American art? What inspires us as American artists? How do we perceive America as artists? Must one be American to make American Art?

These are questions that inspire the work of Painter Ricardo Francis and Sculptor David C. Terry on view at the Anthem Gallery in an exhibit entitled: American Made/Made in America.

This two person show, constructed in the form of an installation, examines and reconstitutes views of American life and American persona through they eyes of two African-American artists.

Ricardo Francis's mutli-media paintings are seen as portraits of our American existence through both a racial and economic scope. This body of work exposes the reality of our cash-culture and nation's attitudes towards race, sex, class, and culture; "reflecting, representing, and reanalyzing various socio-political issues, especially that of the black experience.

Francis is drawn towards the consumer aspect of cultural propaganda through main-stream media. Thus Francis combines his rich highly-textured acrylic portrait with images collected from popular media publications. The result is a deeply layered image combining socially fantasized imagery with collaged scenes from consumer culture, creating an overall "analysis of the images that define us as American."

David C. Terry's sculpture is the result of growing up feeling like an outsider on the "inside": being an African-American in an all-white neighborhood. He takes an objective view to his work describing it as being "about the way we live, the way we relate to one another, the way we perceive the outsiders and insiders of out communities, and about our place in time".

Using marble as a primary medium, Terry takes the idea of documentation of a culture as our primal predecessors documented and communicated their experiences on cave walls, thus taking the drawings off the wall and into a three-dimensional reality. His work further focuses on our "advances in technology," buy juxtaposing contemporary man-made objects with timeless concepts and materials to bring the past and present together. Terry's 'Arms and Armor' series was further inspired while preparing for the exhibit at Francis's studio. On his return he was held up at gun point shaken, but newly inspired.

While both artists' medium is quite different, their concepts are cohesive. Could it be in part because both artists are African-American? Francis was raised in Houston, Texas while Terry was raised in Washington, D.C. In our current administration you could not get any more "American" than that combination. The images in this exhibition are no less American than Francis and Terry themselves, yet it is this upbringing or clash in culture that give them their unique perspectives. Their upbringing this consumer driven/war hungry culture has compelled them to challenge us, as Americans, to look at the overlooked and to see and relate to our lives from perspectives other than our own. Isn't that American?

Anthem Gallery
41 Wooster Street, New York, NY 10013
Btwn Broome and Grande St.

Opening Reception:
Thursday, October 30th, 6 - 9pm

Gallery Hours:
Wednesday - Sunday 11:00am - 6:00 pm
Tuesday by appointment

Phone: (212) 334-9364
Fax: (212) 334-9424
Email: info@anthemgallery.com