Cloudbursts

David McQueen

Nov 17th - Dec 10th 2006

Cinders Gallery is pleased to present "Cloudbursts," a new exhibition of sculpture and drawings by David "Scout" McQueen. For this show, McQueen has culled dozens of internet photos documenting the aftermath of car bomb explosions. These images are then transformed by selectively painting out the wafting smoke, and applying a delicate layer of decorative renaissance ornament. The resultant images speak to the cultural and emotional distance that typifies the American worldview. The absurdity of decorating these violent images also speaks to our individual helplessness in correcting the larger causes behind the events themselves.

The sculptural works in the show integrate the formal ornamentation of the cloudburst images with McQueen's more familiar kinetic works. Using the explosions as templates, he has cast plaster wall sculptures and then carved them into elaborately adorned sculptural reliefs. Some of these clouds will then slowly deteriorate at the hands of a small machine, picking and scraping away at the delicate facade. The dust becomes a powder, the powder becomes a snowfall, the snowfall again a cloudburst.

David received a BA from Oberlin College, a BFA from the University of Florida in Sculpture and his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Sculpture. He has exhibited in a number of group exhibitions in the New York area including the Porch Show and the Family Room at Cinders, Home at the d.u.m.b.o. arts center and solo exhibitions in 2006 at Plane Space in Manhattan and the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art in Wilmington. He has had a residency in Utica, New York at the Sculpture Space. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Opening Night Pics
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