Anno Domini presents...

BOOTLEG BABY from MAY 5 – JUNE 17, 2006
a solo exhibition by Navin June Norling

VIEW AVAILABLE WORKS ONLINE



Both humorous and incisive, the painting-filled installations of Navin June Norling juxtapose American cultural stereotypes, pop iconography, and issues of race, gender, class, power, and economics. In the exhibition Bootleg Baby, content-rich icons such as Moors, Black Power figures, consumer logos, blackface children, cheap signage, graffiti, and celebrities are layered one upon another in paintings that are stacked and hinged on the walls as charms. Coexisting with these charms are pieces of rural debris that tumble into the gallery space, creating in a distinctly American cacophony. Drawing on a wide range of experiences, Norling’s installations become a culmination of personal culture.

Navin June Norling spent most of his life in the San Jose area before attending California College of Arts (graduating with a BFA in 1995) and then moving onto to attend Hunters College in New York (graduating with an MFA in 2002). He now resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Norling has exhibited in important group shows in NY as well as one person shows. This is Norling's west coast debut solo exhibit.


Artist’s Reception: First Friday, May 5, 2006
8pm ’til late • free and open to the public
Music: CatFive

VIEW IMAGES FROM THE INSTALLATION & RECEPTION:
set 1 | set 2

Exhibit on view thru June 17, 2006 AD
Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday, noon 'til 8 p.m.



Excerpt from Make It Now, New Sculpture in New York group exhibition catalogue at The Sculpture Center, NY.

Navin June Norling–“though a recent graduate of Hunter College in New York, and a Brooklyn resident–“is very much a Bay Area artist. Born and raised south of San Francisco, Norling hails from a recent generation of artists raised on the fun and gun ethos of graffiti and the mark-making of urban street culture; from stickers to wheat-pasted posters, it is from this street aesthetic; one that is in dialogue with Norling's teacher Raymond Saunders, as well as younger artists such as Barry McGee and the late Margaret Kilgallen, that Norling's paintings, sculptures and installations derive much of their impact. Trained as a painter, Norling plays with the idea of painting as sculpture and vice-versa. Building walls out of panels of window frames and working on glass, Norling's work walks a line between two and three dimensionality.

Thematically, the iconography of Norling's work includes an eclectic mix, from vaudeville-type images and a present-day fetishization of luxury goods to the imagery of the Black Panthers–“particularly important to his upbringing in the Bay, an area where the Panthers were most successful in bringing forth their message of uplift for African Americans. In marking out these images on glass and wood panels, Norling questions their power and validity in the global marketplace. As is the case with most of his pieces, a sculptural commitment to painting is evident in his use of glass window frames. Attaching the windows in vertical constructions allows the viewer to encounter the work in the round as an active participant. His pieces are often tacked over each other and running from the walls on to the floor, suggestive of the blanket of allover mark-making and the presence of popular art in the world.

~Franklin Sirmans

Franklin Sirmans is an independent curator, freelance writer, editor, and lecturer based in New York City. A former US Editor of Flash Art and Editor-in-Chief of Art AsiaPacific magazines, Sirmans has written for several journals and newspapers on art and culture, including The New York Times, Newsweek International, Essence Magazine, Grand Street, Art in America, ArtNews and Time Out New York, where he was a regular contributor between 2004-2000.

Sirmans is co-curator of the recent exhibitions Basquiat, at the Brooklyn Museum in March, 2005, and Make It Now: New Sculpture in New York, a survey of sculpture in New York at Sculpture Center in Manhattan May, 2005.